Another Pride and Prejudice? What We Know So Far
Netflix is reviving Pride and Prejudice with a prestige cast and very big shoes to fill
There are few things as predictable in the culture-industrial complex as a new Jane Austen adaptation. Like clockwork, every few years, a studio executive somewhere looks up from their coffee, sighs, and says: “Let’s do Pride and Prejudice again.”
But why not? It’s the original IP of romantic tension—the literary equivalent of a tailored white shirt or a really good dirty martini. Reliable, timeless, and very, very seductive.
So, it’s no surprise that Pride and Prejudice is being adapted—again.
Netflix has officially announced its own version of the iconic 1813 novel, and while full details are still under wraps, we’ve got enough to go off: a stellar cast, a first-look image, and some very big shoes to fill. The six-part limited series is being helmed by Heartstopper director Euros Lyn and adapted for screen by author-turned-screenwriter Dolly Alderton (“Everything I Know About Love”), and promises to be a “faithful” reimagining of Austen’s most beloved romance.
But in a world already blessed with Colin Firth’s damp shirt moment and Keira Knightley’s windswept longing, what exactly is left to say?
The Cast: Prestige TV Meets Period Drama
Emma Corrin (The Crown, Deadpool & Wolverine) will play Elizabeth Bennet, everyone’s favourite proto-feminist heroine. Jack Lowden (Slow Horses, Dunkirk) takes on Mr. Darcy—aka the original emotionally unavailable heartthrob with unresolved trauma and 10,000 pounds a year. Yes, there’ll be a lot of brooding British energy between them.
Rounding out the Bennet family are Rufus Sewell (The Diplomat) as the dry and detached Mr. Bennet, Olivia Colman (The Favourite, The Crown) as the hilariously high-strung Mrs. Bennet, Freya Mavor (Industry) as Jane, and Heartstopper’s Rhea Norwood as Lydia. Newcomers Hopey Parish and Hollie Avery take on Mary and Kitty, while Jamie Demetriou (Fleabag) is playing the painfully awkward Mr. Collins.
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Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders, Good Luck to You) takes on Mr. Bingley, Louis Partridge (Enola Holmes) is Mr. Wickham, and Fiona Shaw (Killing Eve, Harry Potter) will play Lady Catherine de Bourgh. It’s a well-balanced ensemble.
Alderton’s Austen: Will It Feel Fresh or Familiar?
Let’s be honest: Austen isn’t just an author anymore—she’s a genre. Pride and Prejudice alone has been adapted, modernised, zombified, meme’d, and folded into more thinkpieces than Mr. Collins has awkward dinner toasts. We’ve had the BBC version with Colin Firth’s infamous wet shirt. The 2005 film that made fog sexy. Bridget Jones’s Diary. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Hell, even Succession at times felt like a Regency-era novel with more expletives and better tailoring.
So why now? The short answer: Because it still works. After years of irony-drenched content and meta-commentary, there’s something radical about earnest love stories, especially ones where the stakes are personal, not planetary. Pride and Prejudice doesn’t have a multiverse. It has dinner parties and looks across the room. And somehow, that’s enough.
Netflix knows this. They’re not remaking Pride and Prejudice because they think you’ve never seen it—they’re doing it because they know you have, and they’re betting you’ll want to see it again. Especially if it’s repackaged with just enough modern flair to feel “fresh,” but not so much that your English major friend threatens to throw her annotated Penguin Classic across the room.
The Real Question: Will It Feel Different?
It’s too early to tell. Alderton’s statement—calling the novel the “blueprint for romantic comedy”—suggests we might get something a little snappier, more emotionally astute than your average corset drama. And with Corrin in the lead, there’s potential for a more gender-fluid, slightly punk take on Lizzy Bennet—a heroine less concerned with pleasing society and more interested in burning it down with wit.
But if early online reactions are anything to go by, audiences are both curious and cagey. Someone asked the real question: “Can anyone really match Keira Knightley’s Lizzie?” That’s the danger of adapting something so beloved: You’re not just making a new show—you’re competing with memory, nostalgia, and the internet’s collective archive of stills, quotes, and fan edits.
Part of the appeal lies in the simplicity of the setup. It’s the ultimate blueprint: misunderstandings, moral growth, and slow-burn romance, all under the thumb of social decorum. It’s also astonishingly modern when viewed through the right lens—class anxiety, gender politics, emotional repression. Basically, Austen walked so Sally Rooney could run.
There’s no release date yet, but filming is underway in the UK, and we’ve already seen a first-look image of the cast in costume. From what little we’ve seen, the vibe feels more, quieter, more grounded, possibly more emotionally raw.
Whether this version will become the definitive adaptation or just another entry in Austen’s endless cinematic legacy remains to be seen. But with this team—Corrin, Lowden, Alderton, Colman—it has all the ingredients to be a smart, stylish retelling.