OD on Austen

Some of you may be interested in this little nugget: PBS's Masterpiece Theater, plans to air adaptations of all of the works of Jane Austen. Plus, they're including a dramatic portrayal of her life, and no, it's not the one with Anne Hathaway. Rather it's titled Miss Austen Regrets, and it stars Olivia Williams (she was Miss Cross in Rushmore), who should be a bit more believable than Hathaway. I think some of the adaptations are new, but there is at least one classic: the BBC's production of Pride & Prejudice, which stars Jennifer Ehle and Colin "You might as well call me Darcy" Firth.

I've thankfully overcome my blithe dismissal of Austen's books, and so I no longer turn my nose up at dramatized versions of them, although the BBC P&P is still the best (thank the lords of Kobol that PBS didn't use the Keira Knightley version, or Watoosa would have gone into a fit of rage). We'll see how the new ones turn out.

There is a webpage for the series here. Since it's PBS, the website doesn't really tell you that much. I hope Masterpiece Theater still uses that same theme music from when I was a kid. I knew when those trumpets started playing that it was time for my parents to watch grown-up TV and for me to go to bed.

Bonus funny story: a few years ago, I gave Watoosa a DVD copy of P&P. She was elated, and she insisted we watch it immediately. It's pretty long, so we split it up over two evenings. During the night after we finished it, I awoke to hear her talking in her sleep. With as much vitriol as I've ever heard come from her lips, she said, "Oh that Mr. Collins...I HATE HIM SO MUCH!"

UPDATE: Imagine my embarassment on realizing I used the coarse, lowbrow Americanized spelling "theater" instead of "theatre." A thousand pardons.

UPDATE 2: Masterpiece Theatre intro theme is here, although it's warbly and quiet and doesn't kick in until the 1:10 mark. On the plus side, it also features that weird Moogish WGBH Boston promo that used to be all over PBS in the 1980s.

UPDATE 3: Mousterpiece Theater intro is here.

UPDATE 4: Monsterpiece Theatre episode is here. Is it me, or does Cookie Monster say "Good Sex Joke" at 00:19?