Mary Bennet: Just no main character energy

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The 1995 BBC Pride And Prejudice miniseries is an iconic piece of pop-culture that has passed into canon for Jane Austen fans.

Nevermind that Mr Darcy never really took a dip in the Pemberley pond in Austen’s novel—it is literally set in stone today; immortalised by a statue of Colin Firth in a diaphanous shirt rising from a lake in London’s Hyde Park. Of all Austen adaptations, it is generally considered the most faithful and tonally right—the 2005 version starring Keira Knightley comes close in popularity but never in authenticity for Austen fandom.

Over six one-hour episodes, the mini-series captures the heart of Austen’s famous novel—it is not slavish in its adherence to its source material (refer to the pond scene) but is slow and thoughtful enough to catch all its frothiness as well as its emotional drift. And now, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of this beloved show, we must have a 10-episode mini-series featuring the middle Bennet sister, Mary, as protagonist.

Yes, the same Mary who is dealt, in the novel, one of Austen’s sharpest and quickest character sketches—she appears in half a dozen scenes at most, and yet we know Mary. What is more, we all know a Mary—she is the sanctimonious, moralising know-it-all who will have a worthy, smug and utterly unoriginal response to everything.

If Mary lived in the 21st century, she would be the constantly virtue-signalling person on Twitter who swoops in to correct your pronouns a second before you correct them yourself. Why Mary? Also read: Malcolm Gladwell's new book packages old wine in a new bottle Fan-fiction writers have mined Pride And Prejudice to write copious amounts of spin-offs—not one character has been spared a closer