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The vibrant, funny, ironic and feisty Miss Elizabeth Bennett has been Mrs Fitzwilliam Darcy for six years, and, despite an army of servants, almost unlimited wealth and an adoring husband, has dwindled into a care-worn looking woman who appears to be permanently worrying about the gas bill! We discover the incredibly wealthy and well-connected Darcy had a disreputable (great?)grandfather who nearly ruined Pemberley then killed himself. Darcy's father was still having to sell land to save Pemberley - and this is the family the maniacally snobbish Lady Catherine de Burgh wished her daughter to marry into? Hardly, I would think!
Furthermore, I am no student of legal history, but when the local magistrate discovers the body of the murder victim has been washed, he talks of "tampering with evidence" - I really cannot believe that such a concept would have existed in the early 19th Century! Indeed, in an age of faith - or lip-service to faith - the proper and respectful treatment of the dead would almost certainly have taken precedence over any other consideration.
Wickham is taken into custody on suspicion of murder even before, in the language of the time, a Coroner's Jury has "sat on the body" - that is, before the relevant legal institution has determined that it was murder, and not accident or suicide. Again, I suggest, unlikely.
I find the plot unbelievable and the acting, with a few notable exceptions - principally Jenna Coleman as the wonderfully ghastly Lydia - frankly mediocre. Elizabeth Darcy confesses to her sister that she thinks Darcy regrets his marriage to her; as Anna Maxwell Martin plays her, he probably does, but then, I wouldn't marry Matthew Rhys' Darcy either!
Sorry, but this genre-bender doesn't work for me!
score 5/10
EnglishBriarRose 27 December 2013
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2929469/ |
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6-1-2021 02:46:02