Matthew Macfadyen

[A Cousin]

I'll jump in here. I've been a Jane Austen fan for much longer than I have been a Spooks fan. I am no expert, but I have been discussing it at another forum for years. Hopefully I can be much more succinct than I am about Spooks!

The book is written from Elizabeth's POV so you don't get to see any of Darcy's inner life until the very end. The reader makes the journey of discovery re: Darcy with Lizzy. Throughout Darcy is seemingly haughty, proud, judgemental, disdainful, conceited, controlling, etc. Only at the very end, after Lizzy sees his true nature and accepts him, does Jane Austen allow the reader to hear what he has to say. He sums it all up by saying that he had been a proud man all his life; that he was given good principles but was left to follow them in pride and conceit.

Darcy is, BTW, very similar to Harry in that he is a very powerful man with a great deal of responsibility on his shoulders who sublimates himself for others a lot, but underneath it is a man of fierce integrity and moral fiber who cares deeply for the people in his charge.

The big question that anyone adapting P&P has to answer is how much of Darcy's inner life to show the audience as it is happening. In the MM adaptation, they chose to keep it pretty true to the structure of the book, which I liked. Another big question is, is Darcy a conceited jerk or is he simply shy. MM chose to interpret Darcy as shy, which I strongly disagree with. And finally, I think they made a casting mistake with Kiera Knightley. I generally like her as an actress but she was too much a star, too much of a marketing coup. This reflected in MM and KN's on screen chemistry which I agree was lacking. He was trying. She was posing.

Nope. Not much more succinct. Sorry....