Wold Newton Day: Death Comes to Pemberley (2014) TV mini-series

More by luck than good management the final episode of this miniseries aired on December 12 here in Australia so I sat down and binge watched all three episodes together on Wold Newton Day.

I'd heard of the P.D. James novel it was based on but I hadn't read it.  There are hints that someone was aware of Farmer's theories,  The Darcys have a son named Fitzwilliam after his father and during Wickham's trial there is mention of his service in the late 1790s which lines up with Farmer's dating

As a fan of the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle six episode Pride and Prejudice Miniseries from 1995, I was a little disappointed that the cast from that didn't return for this follow up but I can understand the difficulty with that given that Colin Firth seems to be in a heap of movies (especially excited for Kingsman: The Secret Service).

Matthew Rhys made a good Mr Darcy, older and wiser.  I wasn't as fond of Anna Maxwell Martin as Elizabeth Darcy, that comes more from the fact that I was madly in love with Jennifer Ehle than any problems with Martin's acting.  Jemma Coleman was a fun Lydia Wickham as was Matthew Goode as her husband.  And it was a pleasure to see Penelope Keith as Lady Catherine.

The idea of a murder in Pemberley isn't new (The Wild Hunstman by Win Scott Eckert, The six Mr & Mrs Darcy Mysteries by Carol Bebris) but I liked this story bringing Lydia and Mr Wickham back into the lives of the Darcys.  There was an extra darkness to some of the characters from the original novel but the events of the intervening years makes sense.

I also liked the new characters, Henry Alveston, a suitor for Georgiana Darcy and Sir Selwyn Hardcastle the magistrate and coroner investigating the murder with a history with the Darcy family. (one wonders if he was an ancestor to Judge Milton C Hardcastle from the 1980s TV series Hardcastle and McCormick). 

I'll have read the book now but this was a nice way to spend Wold Newton Day.