Death Comes to Pemberley

Peter McGinn

This non-Austen sequel to Pride and Prejudice was quite good. It featured an intelligent rendering of the familiar story and characters of the original, but you would expect no less from the PD James novel. Since I watch a lot of British programming, sec=verbal of the actors were familiar to me, and the ensemble cast stayed in their lanes and put on a great collective performance. It must have been fun for them and the director, for they were able to reenact familiar scenes from Pride and Prejudice as memory flashbacks. There were traces i=of character growth here and there, but characters such as the irrepressible Lydia, the cad Wickham, and the drama queen Mrs. Bennett are little changed so quite recognizable. The subplots add enough to the story to carry their weight, especially one of them that ties into the murder mystery, and the same can be said for a few new characters created for this sequel. Small aspects of the developments might be predictable, but there is one twist that is both logical and shocking. What more can you ask of a plot twist?