Update: ITV is trying to stoke the flames of Jane Austen fever - click here for a first view of the new promo which will launch on Sunday.
Original post: Friday 15 Feb: Any new Jane Austen adaptations are inevitably going to be overshadowed by 'that' scene in Pride and Prejudice.
You know the one. Where Colin Firth emerged from the lake in a wet shirt and breeches. The question is, how do you top that?
That's pretty much what everyone wanted to know at the launch of ITV's new Jane Austen season today.
Many have tried and failed to re-kindle that Colin Firth phwoar factor. Think Matthew Macfadyen and Keira Knightly in the recent Pride and Prejudice. Far too obvious.
Well ITV might have found a successor to Firth in the shape of Spooks star Rupert Penry-Jones. He plays Captain Frederick Wentworth in the adaptation of Austen's more mature novel Persuasion (due to air in the spring). Ciaran Hinds played the same role for the BBC in the nineties and was brilliant. But Rupert plays it a bit racier and with some of the hard-edged, smouldering charm that Colin Firth gave Mr Darcy.
And the trembling kiss between Wentworth and Anne Elliott - played by the brilliant Sally Hawkins - after years of suppressed emotion, had the audience transfixed.
Judging by the large number of female journalists who flocked to chat to Rupert after the screening, ITV may have found someone to step into Colin Firth's breeches...as it were.
Let the Rupert versus Colin debate begin.
