Jane Austen

2025 marks 250 years since the birth of Jane Austen, the English writer whose finely tuned observations of Regency life shaped the modern novel. But perhaps more notably for Screenshot, it’s also 30 years since Colin Firth walked out of a lake and straight into the nation’s hearts, in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice miniseries.

Three decades on from the ‘Austenmania’ of 1995, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore Jane Austen adaptations past and present. Do screen versions of novels like Emma and Sense and Sensibility offer a cosy retreat from the modern world - or do they still have something to say in the present moment?

Mark speaks to film writer and researcher Lillian Crawford about various Austen triumphs and missteps on screen, from numerous incarnations of Emma, to Netflix’s recent update on her last novel, Persuasion. He also speaks to playwright Nick Dear about an adaptation many Austen experts consider a high-water mark - the 1995 version of Persuasion, written by Dear and directed by Roger Michell for the BBC’s Screen Two strand.

Meanwhile, Ellen talks to Amy Heckerling, writer and director of the classic 1995 comedy Clueless, which transplants Austen’s novel Emma to a Beverly Hills high school. And she also speaks to writer-director Celine Song, whose recent film Materialists stars Dakota Johnson as a professional matchmaker - and unmistakably bears the influence of Austen.

Producer: Jane Long
A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4