Every time someone announces a new Pride and Prejudice adaptation, half the internet groans. There are already too many. The 1995 BBC miniseries with Colin Firth is sacred. The 2005 Joe Wright film with Keira Knightley is the modern definitive. What could a sixth television version possibly add?

The honest answer is: a lot, if it's brave enough.

Why the existing adaptations stop short

The 1995 version, for all its devotion to the source, is a museum piece. It's almost laboriously faithful — every scene from the book, in order, at length. That fidelity is its strength and its limit. It assumes the audience already loves Austen and just wants to see her transcribed onto film.

The 2005 Wright film does the opposite. It treats the novel as raw material for a romantic mood piece, and what it loses in plot it gains in cinematic feeling. The morning-mist proposal, the rain-soaked confrontation, the hand flex — these are the moments that made a generation of viewers fall in love with Austen, even if they're not exactly in the book.

Both adaptations chose a side: faithfulness or feeling. Neither attempted what Austen herself did, which was to make us laugh while also breaking our hearts.

What Emma Corrin and Jack Lowden could do differently

Casting is the first real surprise. Emma Corrin played Diana in The Crown with a kind of watchful wit that translates directly into Elizabeth Bennet. Jack Lowden has spent the last few years building a career out of repressed intelligence — exactly the energy Darcy needs and rarely gets. They have the right shape for the parts.

The second surprise is the runtime. Six episodes is more than the 2005 film and less than the 1995 miniseries — enough room for Mr. Collins to be properly insufferable, the Bingley sisters to be properly cruel, and Charlotte Lucas's mercenary marriage to be the genuine devastation it is in the book. Most adaptations rush the side plots. This one might not have to.

The version of Pride and Prejudice we haven't gotten yet is the funny one. The 1995 version is reverent, the 2005 version is romantic. Austen herself was, above all else, witty.

What I'm watching for

The test, every time someone adapts Austen, is what they do with the comedy. Mr. Bennet's lines are genuinely funny on the page. Mr. Collins is excruciating. Mrs. Bennet is a slapstick figure who somehow remains sympathetic. Most adaptations either play these characters straight (and lose the humor) or play them broad (and lose the dignity). The good ones do both at once, which is harder than it looks.

I'll also be watching the second-act pacing. The trip to Pemberley is structurally crucial — it's where Elizabeth's view of Darcy is rebuilt, brick by brick, in his absence. Most adaptations rush through it. If the new version slows down here and trusts the silence, it'll have done something the others didn't.

Why we keep coming back to Austen

There's a version of this argument that says we don't need another Austen adaptation because we have plenty. I think that misunderstands why Pride and Prejudice keeps getting remade. It's not because each generation needs its own — though that's true. It's because Austen wrote a book so structurally clean that any decent director can find new things in it, and a book so emotionally specific that the right two actors can make it feel new even when nothing has changed.

The 2026 version doesn't need to replace the others. It just needs to add something. Based on the casting and the runtime, I think it has a real chance. We'll see in a few months whether the chance gets taken.