Jane Austen fans are getting a new PRIDE AND PREJUDICE this fall, and the writer adapting it for Netflix says she’s tried to honor the 1813 novel while still finding something new to say about it.
“It has been a joy to delve back into its pages to find both familiar and fresh ways of bringing this beloved book to life,” author and screenwriter Dolly Alderton told TV Insider.
Alderton wrote all six episodes of the limited series and serves as one of its executive producers, stepping into territory well-trodden by more than two centuries of readers and more than 20 years of screen adaptations, including Joe Wright’s celebrated 2005 movie starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. Euros Lyn directs Netflix’s version for Lookout Point, the BBC Studios company known for WAR & PEACE and POLDARK.
The story follows Elizabeth Bennet as she navigates her mother’s marriage schemes, her own quick judgments and a prickly courtship with the wealthy Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.
THE CROWN actress Emma Corrin plays Elizabeth, the second-eldest of five Bennet daughters whose wit and independence put her at odds with the expectation that she marry for money rather than love. SLOW HORSES star Jack Lowden takes on Darcy, the role at the center of literature’s original enemies-to-lovers romance. Academy Award winner Olivia Colman plays Mrs. Bennet, the family’s marriage-obsessed matriarch, opposite Rufus Sewell as her long-suffering husband.
The ensemble rounds out with Freya Mavor as Jane Bennet, Daryl McCormack as Mr. Bingley, Louis Partridge as Mr. Wickham, Rhea Norwood as Lydia Bennet, Jamie Demetriou as Mr. Collins, Siena Kelly as Caroline Bingley and Fiona Shaw as Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Newcomers Hopey Parish and Hollie Avery make their screen debuts as Bennet sisters Mary and Kitty.
Related: PRIDE & PREJUDICE 20 Years Later: Stars Reflect on Bringing Jane Austen’s Story to Life
“I am so excited to reintroduce these hilarious and complicated characters to those who count Pride and Prejudice as their favorite book and those who are yet to meet their Lizzie and Mr. Darcy,” Alderton said.
That mix of reverence and reinvention is exactly what has kept Austen’s story alive since 1813, and it’s also what made Movieguide® fall hard for the last major screen version.
Movieguide®’s review of the 2005 PRIDE & PREJUDICE called it “simply sublime” and praised how the story “strongly extols Christian virtues such as love, charity, forgiveness, and reconciliation.” That review singled out Darcy as a man who proves himself “a gentleman of the highest Christian virtue” once Elizabeth looks past her first impression of him.
That’s the real engine underneath all the ballroom scenes and clever put-downs: two people who mistake pride for good judgment learn, slowly and at real cost to their own egos, to see each other rightly. It’s a decent reminder for anyone raising kids on a steady diet of instant villains and heroes that people are usually more complicated, and more redeemable, than a first impression suggests.
Whether Alderton’s version, filmed on location in London’s Spitalfields, the Peak District and Rye, East Sussex, standing in for the fictional market town of Meryton, can match the moral weight of its predecessor remains to be seen. Netflix hasn’t released a specific premiere date beyond its fall 2026 window, but given the built-in audience for anything Austen, this PRIDE AND PREJUDICE won’t lack for viewers eager to find out.
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