Your December comfort watch just got sorted. Netflix released the full trailer for its new Pride and Prejudice series, and the six-episode series premieres on December 3.
Who's behind it
The series is written by Dolly Alderton, whose memoir Everything I Know About Love became a generation's handbook on friendship and heartbreak, and it is directed by Euros Lyn. Six episodes gives Austen's story more room than any film version has had, which matters for a novel that is as much about sisters, money and small-town gossip as it is about one proposal in the rain.
The cast
Emma Corrin plays Elizabeth Bennet opposite Jack Lowden as Mr. Darcy. The casting coup is the Bennet parents: Olivia Colman as Mrs. Bennet and Rufus Sewell as Mr. Bennet, two actors who can make a marriage feel both funny and a little sad in a single look. Fiona Shaw, Louis Partridge, Jamie Demetriou and Daryl McCormack round out the ensemble.
The Bennet sisters are Freya Mavor as Jane, Hopey Parish as Mary, Hollie Avery as Kitty and Rhea Norwood as Lydia, with Parish and Avery making their screen debuts. Jamie Demetriou plays Mr. Collins, Daryl McCormack is Mr. Bingley, Louis Partridge is Mr. Wickham, Siena Kelly is Caroline Bingley and Fiona Shaw takes on Lady Catherine de Bourgh, according to Netflix Tudum.
Inside the trailer
The trailer opens with Lizzy and Jane on the roof of Longbourn, talking through the choice that shaped every woman in Austen's world: governess and spinster, or wife and mother. Alderton told Netflix she always wanted that exchange to be the first line, "not only because I think it's so relatable to women now who are looking to find the right partner and looking to find love, who are resentful of how much time it takes over their schedule and their brain, but also because it captures how much Lizzy is a character who's working things out as she goes along."
Olivia Colman gets the famous opening line of the novel, "It is a truth universally acknowledged," which Alderton gave to Mrs. Bennet because finding husbands for her daughters is the central drama of her story. Corrin, who also earns a first executive producer credit here, told Tudum, "I don't think we've had an adaptation that does the modernity and the authenticity that we love." Alderton and Lyn executive produce with Laura Lankester, Will Johnston and Louise Mutter for Lookout Point, and Lisa Osborne, who produced Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, is the producer.
Why it's worth a look
We have had the 1995 BBC series and the 2005 film, and plenty of people have strong loyalties to one or the other. A new version has to earn its place, and Alderton is the right writer to try. She is great at female friendship and at the messy, funny side of romance, so expect a version with more of Lizzy's inner life and more of the bond between Lizzy and Jane.
The longer format should help the side characters too. Charlotte Lucas's practical marriage, Lydia's disastrous elopement and Mrs. Bennet's very real panic about her daughters' futures all play differently when you have time to sit with them, and those are the threads that hit hardest once you are old enough to understand the money underneath the romance.
Watch the trailer
The trailer and first-look photos are on Netflix Tudum. Then decide now whether this is a solo binge with a blanket or a group-chat watch party.
