Overall, I found the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries to be an adequate if not comparatively excellent adaptation of the original source material. There's a lot to discuss and it's pretty challenging to narrow the focus down to just one subject, so I'm going to take the most predictable route and just go with a straight-up Lizzie Bennett discussion. Honestly, the main challenge that the filmmakers were faced with was probably the way in which they represented it's lead character. I felt that the Lizzie Bennett of the 1995 adaptation was almost like a different person than the original character. I realize that a lot of people express that concern when they see their favorite characters adapted to a new media, but she just didn't feel like Lizzie to me. First of all she acted like a forty year old woman who was playing the role of like a 17 year old. Which was creepy, personally. Second, I felt like they took some pretty big liberties with her representation. As I watched this 17 year old witty and humorous girl getting portrayed as a quiet and serious looking middle aged woman, I couldn't help but feel that they failed to capture what made Lizzie "Lizzie". That's not to say I didn't like it... but one of the main draws on Lizzie in the book is that she is sharp and really interesting, and they didn't give her the spotlight she needed for this miniseries. Maybe their focus on improving minor characters got in the way, but to me personally, I'm left with two questions:
1. Why does Lizzie not feel like Lizzie, and am I the only person who felt this way?
2. Why is literally everyone else given an improved representation over the source material?
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