Blog Archives
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries”
Dear Frank,
Today is a first: I’m telling you about a web series, which I’m fairly sure has never happened before (on this blog, anyway — I’m pretty sure I’ve told you about stuff in person, but of course that doesn’t count because it didn’t happen on the internet).
But Frank, as you are a man who appreciates transmedia narratives and Jane Austen (at least, I think you appreciate Jane Austen), you’ll be glad to know about this.
There are more adaptations of Pride and Prejudice than there are stars in the sky, but The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which premiered on YouTube last April, is the only one that updates the characters as young, Internet-savvy vloggers, and uses multiple social media accounts to offer multiple perspectives on the classic tale of gossip, misunderstandings, stubbornness and (eventually) makeouts. Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank Stuff She Forgot Happened In “Bridget Jones’s Diary”
Dear Frank,
Let us continue our descent into nostalgia, shall we? Of course, when it comes to today’s topic, you probably have less nostalgia to deal with than I do.
Frank, if you’ve forgotten, Bridget Jones’s Diary is a year in the life of a slightly spacey 30-something lady, who originated in the newspaper columns of Helen Fielding. When given the opportunity to turn her columns into one of the first great examples of the chick-lit genre, Fielding riffed off the plot of Jane Austin’s the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice—
Wait, Frank, because you are not a girl, you may not have watched the BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series (which was basically the Downton Abbey of its day), so if you’ve forgotten the bare essentials of that story, here they are: Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In... 