'Lost in Austen' is a Subversive Tribute to 'Pride & Prejudice'

Released by ITV in 2008 and originally aired on Ovation in the U.S., Lost in Austen has a terrific cast and is one of the most wacko and inventive Austen interpretations ever made. The four-part series was directed by Dan Zeff and adapted from Austen’s 1813 novel by Guy Andrews (Victoria). It has some of the surrealism of another time-travel TV show from the same period, 2006’s Life on Mars, and a touch of Jasper Fforde’s book The Eyre Affair, in which fictional characters take on a life of their own outside the confines of their respective novels. Even better, it’s peppered with references and jokes that will delight the most fervent Janeite. It holds its own against the Austen movie canon, even daring to poke fun at the beloved 1995 Pride & Prejudice, and the clothes and settings, particularly the candlelight indoor scenes, are gorgeous.

Hear that? That’s Jane Austen spinning in her grave like a cat in a tumble dryer.

21st-century Londoner Amanda Price (Jemima Rooper) finds her life unsatisfactory. Her boyfriend Michael (Daniel Percival), who likes his bike and his booze, proposes, between burps, offering the pull ring from his beer can. Like so much in her life, it’s just not good enough. She yearns for the sort of romance and manners she finds between the pages of her much-read copy of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. Then, one morning, she finds Elizabeth Bennet (Gemma Arterton) in her bathroom, which conceals a portal to Longbourn, the Bennets’ house. Thrilled and fascinated, Amanda enters the house and finds, delightfully, that she’s arrived the very day the family has discovered that Netherfield is let at last!