Pride and Prejudice
Abigail Reynolds is the author of seven Regency-set variations on "Pride and Prejudice". Her Pemberley Variations series includes "Mr. Darcy's Obsession", "To Conquer Mr. Darcy", "What Would Mr. Darcy Do" and "Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World". Her modern adaptation, "The Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice", is set on Cape Cod.
Pride and Prejudice (1995 TV series)
The adaptation is famous for a scene in its fourth episode where a fully dressed Darcy, having emerged from a swim in a lake at Pemberley, accidentally encounters Elizabeth. While many critics attributed the scene's appeal to Firth's sexual attractiveness, Andrew Davies thought that it unwittingly "rerobed, not disrobed, Austen". When Davies wrote the scene (it was not part of Austen's novel), he did not intend a sexual connection between Elizabeth and Darcy but to create "an amusing moment in which Darcy tries to maintain his dignity while improperly dressed and sopping wet". The BBC opposed Davies's plan to have Darcy naked but the producers discarded the alternative of using underpants as fatuous. According to Davies, Firth had "a bit of the usual tension about getting [his] kit off", the scene was filmed with Firth in linen shirt, breeches and boots. A stuntman, who appears in midair in a very brief shot, was hired because of the risk of infection with Weil's disease at Lyme Park. A short underwater segment was filmed separately with Firth in a tank at Ealing Studios in west London.