Throng

8:30pm Monday, December 21 on TV One

Written by acclaimed television writer Guy Andrews, Lost In Austen is an ingenious reinvention of the classic novel, Pride And Prejudice, in which Jane Austen's story is thrown off track by a very modern heroine, Amanda Price (tonight at 8.30pm on TV ONE). Amanda (Jemima Rooper, Sinchronicity) swaps places with Elizabeth Bennet (Gemma Arterton, Quantum Of Solace) and takes centre stage in the celebrated love story.

Andrews (Prime Suspect) says when the producer first suggested the concept of Lost In Austen she thought it a worthless idea. "Damien Timmer shouted it down the phone to me one summer afternoon. He was sweltering in the depths of some enormous shop in London, failing to keep control of his children; I was doing pretty much the same at an agricultural show, which seemed to consist entirely of bouncy castles. The noise at both ends of the conversation was brain-shrivelling.

"I was as polite and indulgent to Damien as I could manage under the circumstances, and privately thought that the idea - what I could grasp of it - was utter drivel. Who, for God's sake, wants yet more gloves, bonnets and heaving embonpoints clogging up their television? Poor Jane Austen. Leave the luckless woman in peace. Cease fanning and drop no curtseys."

But once home, he says he began to doodle with the idea, starting with a young woman, who for no legitimate reason is dissatisfied with her lot. "She secretly insulates herself against the indignities she encounters every day by reading Jane Austen. She reads with such intensity that she opens a connection to Austen's world. She enters that world in the place of Elizabeth Bennet, and then finds that she cannot return. She dedicates herself to keeping the plot of her beloved book on track - even in the absence of the central character - but everything she does seems to send the story lurching ever more desperately off-piste."

Andrews says once he set to playing with the book, it was clear the serious work had already been done 200 years ago. "Is there a better constructed, more balanced, sublimely satisfying story than Pride And Prejudice? As a sequence of dramatic progressions, reverses, false summits and romantic epiphanies, the book cannot be beat. More important for our purposes, the narrative is so robust that it is effectively indestructible."

Andrews' intention was never to twist Austen's characters for the sake of twisting - he wanted to write characters closer to what Austen actually wrote, rather than how they may have appeared in previous film or television adaptations, he says. Reporting on his writing progress to colleagues, Andrews says he received more intelligent, imaginative and insightful criticism and advice than he ever has before.

"People may hate it. But - even though I didn't recognise it when it was being waved in my face - Lost In Austen is a good idea and an interesting one, and they're pretty thin on the ground. I'm very grateful to have been involved." Part one of Lost In Austen sees the disillusioned Amanda Price discover Elizabeth Bennet in her bathroom, and soon she finds herself swapping places with Lizzie, entering the 'real' fictional world of Pride And Prejudice.

Amanda arrives at Longbourn, the home of the Bennet family, and realises she's joined the action at the very start of the story. She gets to know the remaining Bennet sisters, and prepares to meet Mr Darcy (Elliot Cowan, The Golden Compass). How will she keep the greatest love story of all time on track when Elizabeth Bennet is stuck in the modern world?

Playing Mr and Mrs Bennet are Hugh Bonneville (Notting Hill) and Alex Kingston (ER); Lindsay Duncan (Rome) plays Darcy's aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh; Morven Christie (Oliver Twist) is Jane Bennet; Tom Mison (The Amazing Mrs Pritchard) is Mr Bingley; Guy Henry (Rome) is Mr Collins; Tom Riley (I Want Candy) is Captain Wickham; and Christina Cole is Caroline Bingley.

Part two screens Monday 21 December on TV ONE at 8.30pm.