In the A&E version, well first, after so much praise I was initially just shocked at how bad it was. Jane looked like a man in drag, Colin overacted painfully, embarrassingly, Ehle looked like she was about to sneeze all the time because some invisible person was tickling her nose with a feather & her eyes always squinted & her mouth always pursed, ugh! Awful, awful!!

I’ve always seen Lizzie as intelligent, fiesty, well-adjusted overall, but it being clear a lot of her personality is her clash with her mother (who truly doesn’t seem to like her daughter much) but is saved by being her father’s favorite. Have no idea if an ‘alpha’ female existed in the mind of Austen in the 18th century, and even now I don’t know what another poster here meant. Anway…love 2005 version…especially when he first proposes..great scene leaves me sighing each time.

Kicked puppy? If you’re thinking of the first proposal I saw it more as a total shock to hear “No way in hell,” from Elizabeth.

That being said, I hate this version. I didn’t mind it so much when I first saw it, but the more times I’ve seen it, the more it started to annoy me. I think it’s really Matthew McFadyen that ruins it for me (and also the cinematography, which is beautiful but way over-the-top for this story). He is cute, but he makes an absolutely terrible Darcy. Telling him off would be like kicking a puppy.

However, each to their own!

I’ve tried to blot most of it out, it irritated me so much, but I do recall the wimpish non-entity who played Mr Darcy could well have been replaced by a wooden board with a face painted on it, for all the personality he had. Keira Knightly was miscast as to looks, and her acting was anachronistic; and in this she was not alone. The interactions between the characters jarred, repeatedly destroying any believability and period atmosphere which may have inadvertently developed.

Poor Knightly, she made a better show in “The Duchess” from an acting perspective, but the girl is a stick insect: the Georgian wigs and hats completely swamped her, and being able to discern individual bones in her disturbingly skeletal figure was just wrong. Miscast again. The Duchess of Devonshire was a stylish, dashing, well-fed woman whom people admired. Her clothes would have been tailored to fit her to perfection. Knightly looked like an anorexic daughter play-acting in her mother’s clothes, despite her better acting in that film.

The Frith/Ehle “Pride & Prejudice” is the definitive version for me, as it is for many others. There were sincere efforts made to accurately echo the manners, customs, dress, and music of the times as realistically as possible. For you to say Ehle’s Elizabeth was “over the top” and “rude” makes my jaw drop in amazement. I can’t believe you actually watched it, and if you did, it must have been while you were talking on the phone and cooking dinner at the same time or something. You have entirely missed the interplay of subtle 19th century manners and mores. She is rude once and apologises for it. She displays a controlled intelligence and sense of humour. Far from being “haughty, arrogant, and more than a touch above her company” she is keenly aware of her social standing: she is a gentleman’s daughter, but by no means uppermost in the social hierarchy, and with only modest prospects unless she or one of her sisters marries particularly well (not that she is at all avaricious, initially spurning the wealthy Darcy with gusto).

I think your preference reflects the gulf between your era/education/customs and that of Elizabeth Bennet as she would have been: I’d suggest you read up on Georgian history, as well as examine some books actually written at the time (Pride & Prejudice itself might be a good start) to get the flavour of the language of the time, as well as to try to get inside the thought processes of people of the period. Immerse yourself in the culture and start thinking like a person from the early 1800s and you will comprehend how shallow Knightly & Co’s prancing around playing dress-ups actually is.

Keira is not at all believable as an alpha female.
She is too soft
and she didn’t play hard enough against Mr. Darcy.

Have you seen two alphas go at it?
It isn’t pretty,
it isn’t nice,
(but it is a lot of fun for the alphas involved
- I’m an alpha married to an alpha).

I think the Director of the Keira movie
didn’t understand the book.
It ended up as a silly love story
instead of one of the best studies
in alpha dynamics there is.