It’s been rumoured for a while that the BBC was making a new version of Jane Austen’s Emma. Now it’s official – their press release says that Sandy Welch has written the screenplay for a four-part mini-series. A shame they’re not doing six parts, as with the 1995 Pride and Prejudice which I’ve just enjoyed re-watching, but four is still giving much more space to tell the story than just a single film! No casting news as yet.
BBC making new version of ‘Emma’
January 30, 2009 by Judy
Posted in costume drama, Jane Austen | Tagged BBC, Emma, Sandy Welch | 5 Comments
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As I wrote on Eighteenth-Century Worlds,
I too wish the coming _Emma_ were as long as the 1972 BBC _Emma_. That was a superb rendition, and part of the reason for this was its length. It was 6 full hours. However, there is this reality of compensation as pointed out by Davies in a recent interview (discussed in Robert Giddings’s _The Classic Serial on Television and Radio_):
“the style of television drama … has changed ‘partly as the pace of life generally has changed, and the general pace of film and televisoino tends to spell things out less and I suppose they move from image to image, and scenes tend to be shorter than they used to and more points made with just a visual image rather than two pages of dialogue (p. 91).
I think you can see this clearly if you compare the recent spate of Austen movies (the 2007-8) and the movies of 1995-6 and again with the movies of the 1970s and 80s. In the ’70s and 80s you had long developed scenes and rarely was there a cut to a visual image and epitomizing encounter through brief lines; nowadays you have few long developed scenes, much much more montage, and many epitomizing scenes. And it’s not all loss: audiences are more sophisticated and people have learned to take information, insight, feeling from brief encounters on the screen so I think perhaps a 4 parter could convey as much as the 6 part. Now if they had a 6 parter, how much more they could convey since in the 72 6 parter they still had to eliminate elements — and they chose to curtail the ending of the novel.
Nonetheless, a 4 parter with the new techniques may surprize us. Music is used more integrally nowadays, voice-over has now achieved respectability and a subjectivizing of narrative and drama is common. So altogether I’m hopeful :), especially as it’s Sandy Welch.
Ellen
Dear Ellen, I’ve also been watching the 1960s adaptation of ‘The Forsyte Saga’ (I’m watching it at a leisurely pace, one episode a week!) and can definitely see how styles have changed over the years – far from cutting out large chunks of the story, this series has whole episodes full of extra material which isn’t even in the books, and endless added scenes with characters having cups of tea and leisurely chats.
By contrast, as the quote from Davies says, now things are spelt out less and one image or brief scene does a lot of work. So, although I’d have loved to see a full six-episode ‘Emma’, I do agree that a four-episode version may still be very good – and I also agree that Sandy Welch is a brilliant screenwriter.
Dear Judy, my name is Lena I`m 17 years old and I`m from germany (the reason , my english is so …….. wrong :-) ) And I found this article !!! Do you know if there will be a casting for the actors of the new version of Emma???? Maybe it sounds crazy and stupidly ,but I`m dreaming of the chance to act in one of these “Jane Austen”-films!!! :-)
Lena
Hello Lena, nice to hear from you! I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the casting for the series, but I wish you all the best for the future with your acting.:)
Thank`s !!!! Wish you all the best too!! :-)