Langston's Additions

Considered the most faithful screen adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the 1995 BBC adaptation nevertheless takes liberties in adding scenes and dialogue. In most cases, the storyline justifies these supplementary features. These scenes provide extra information on characters that many readers may not discover. The added scenes and dialogue in BBC's Pride and Prejudice serve to enhance the viewer's understanding of the historic novel by further describing inter-character relationships and by fleshing out their personalities. This allows the audience to fully comprehend aspects of the story that only reading the story would provide.

To begin, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice contains many complex relationships between characters which are often hard to detail when adapting the novel to a screen version. While directing the miniseries, Simon Langton adds scenes and dialogue to aid the viewer in understanding these relationships. To demonstrate the chemistry that Miss Darcy and Lizzy share, Langton adds a scene with Lizzy supporting Georgiana in her playing of the piano. She "insists" that Georgiana play even though she is too shy to play "in front of these people" (Episode 5). When Caroline brings up Mr. Wickham Lizzy supports Miss Darcy to show that she is not alone. At the end of the scene Lizzy and Mr. Darcy share a look of understanding that he is thankful for her doing so. This additional scene demonstrates that Lizzy and Georgiana have a strong relationship from the beginning and Mr. Darcy is grateful that Lizzy is there to help. Another added scene occurs when Langston displays Darcy's admiration for Lizzy while he is taking a bath and watches Elizabeth from the window. While he may love Elizabeth, Darcy d...

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...ot understand the issues between Wickham and Georgiana and that she will attempt to undermine Lizzy no matter the cause. In summary, Langston's addition of scenes and dialogue adds to the viewer's understanding of characters by making changes and flaws in their character more apparent.

Although it is hard to compress Austen's Pride and Prejudice into a screen format, BBC's 1995 version is the most faithful. The director, Simon Langston, even takes liberties to add scenes that do not occur in the novel to enhance the viewer's understanding of relationships between characters. Extra dialogue between characters is also added to further the audience's comprehension of their nature. In conclusion, Langston's miniseries supplements scenes and dialogue into the screen representation so that the viewer can further understand a character's personality and relationships.