Death Comes To Pemerley: Preview Screening
Death Comes To Pemberley preview at the Yorkshire Museum in York
11:07am Saturday 14th December 2013
The first episode of Death Comes To Pemberley was screened at the Yorkshire Museum on Thursday night. JULIAN COLE previews the three-part drama.
THERE are pleasing layers to Death Comes To Pemberley. First there is the Jane Austen layer as put down in Pride And Prejudice; then there is the PD James strata, in which the veteran crime writer imagined a murderous sequel; and now there is the period TV drama.
This screen adaptation is mostly true to PD James’s bestseller murder mystery sequel, although elements of the original have been restored (notably the Bennet parents, who are missing in the novel).
Pemberley opens six years after the end of P&P. The former Elizabeth Bennet is now Mrs Fitzwilliam Darcy and life is resplendently good, so much so that the estimable Anna Maxwell Martin even gets to smile; although not too widely or for too long.
Lizzie and Darcy (Matthew Rhys) are preparing for a grand ball, to which Lizzie’s sister Lydia (Jenna Coleman) is not invited, thanks to her union with the disgraced Wickham (Matthew Goode). But they invite themselves along regardless.
They head to Pemberley in a carriage with Wickham’s old friend, Captain Denny, with whom there has been a serious falling out. The coachman is ordered to stop in the middle of the dark woods. Wickham and Denny storm off into the tall shadows. Shots are heard, the carriage races to Pemberley, conveying Lydia, who is tightly wrapped in hysterics.
Denny is later found dead in the arms of Wickham - this is to give nothing away; it’s in the title of the book - and the crime element of the story comes into focus. PD James has fun here, balancing detection methods at the time with what will come later.
Witness magistrate Sir Selwyn Hardcastle (Trevor Eve, hidden beneath a drooping mop of a wig) as he interrogates the local doctor while examining Denny’s body in the gun-room at Pemberley.
“Have you clever medical men established a method of telling one man’s blood from another?”
“We do not set ourselves up to be God, my Lord.”
As for the rest, well, wait and see. It’s a handsome affair, beautifully shot, well acted and nicely paced, with Lizzie turning detective.
Screen Yorkshire, which already raised funds for the excellent Peaky Blinders earlier in the year, should be proud of helping to make Pemberley happen, with much of the drama shot in York and North Yorkshire.
The rest of us can just sit back and enjoy a period drama with a few sharp twists.
Death Comes To Pemberley begins on BBC1 on Boxing Day
Source: YorkPress.Co.Uk