Persuasion

Last night I watched the last of ITV's Jane Austen adaptations, Persuasion. I hadn't watched the others; I wasn't attracted by the 'modernising' spin of the publicity, but this one looked as if it might be better, and I thought the BBC's version a few years ago was superb, so was interested in seeing what ITV would make of it.
Well, it wasn't too bad. I always feel a bit weird watching ITV as I rarely see anything on the channel, just the odd South Bank Show and Champions League football match. It's like listening to Classic FM when there's nothing I want to listen to on Radio 3. But it really was a creditable effort in some ways. I liked the girl who played Anne Elliott very much, Captain Wentworth was suitably brooding and tortured, and I enjoyed Anthony Head, who was obviously enjoying himself enormously as Sir Walter Elliott. However there was too much hanging around what looked like the Cobb at Lyme Regis, though, and wet shirts, bringing back memories The French Lieutenant's Woman and Pride and Prejudice. Anne racing around Bath at the end was just silly. None of the passers by seemed remotely perturbed. In the end it looked just what it was, a 21st century girl dressed up in Regency clothes running round Bath.
I have no idea whether the adaptation was any good as I haven't read the book, but it did at least make me want to, but I also wanted to see the BBC's production again and promptly put it on my Amazon DVD list. Why are the BBC's period adaptations so much better? They aren't always, but when they really try they are peerless. Last year's Bleak House for example, fresh, imaginative, yet capturing the spirit of Dickens and the period. The past was different for heaven's sake, and that difference should be captured, not 'updated' and given a spurious modernity.