I know I’m a bit late to the party here but I’ve just discovered The Lizzie Bennet Diaries – and I’m already a huge fan! (Seriously, I’ve spent every spare moment over the past few days catching up!)

So what am I talking about? The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a modern interpretation of Pride and Prejudice (which you may have guessed from the title) where Lizzie (Ashley Clements) is a grad student with a video diary. The plot is faithful to Austen’s novel without being completely predicable (for example, Kitty Bennet is actually Lydia’s cat in this version) so even though we know basically what’s going to happen, it all feels fresh and new.

At first, I wondered how it would be possible to modernise a novel so centred around marriage and societal constructs, but it was soon obvious that the Lizzie Bennet team has their act together – proposals are replaced with job offers (though love is still flirting away in the background) and a lot of the cultural observations from the original story are still surprisingly relevant today. I was particularly curious to see how the Lydia scandal would be brought into the 21st century – and let me say that something suitably shocking is currently unfolding!

The cast have great chemistry and the videos are great fun to watch. You really get to know the characters and they feel like real, modern people with real, modern problems. Half the time, I forget I’ve already read the book!

The series will be wrapping up shortly so make sure you catch up before it does – I’ve posted the first video below to get you started!