You would have had to be living in Britain in 1995 to understand the astonishing impact that the BBC's mini-series version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice had on the culture. It was one of those rare moments when an entire nation seemed to be watching the same television program at night just to discuss it excitedly the following day. What at first sounded like exchanges of personal gossip between people on the tube or in pubs would be revealed, upon closer eavesdropping, as debates on whether Elizabeth Bennet had truly ruined her chances with Mr. Darcy, or whether her sister and Mr. Bingley were properly suited for each other.

In the aftermath of this cultural event in Britain came plans for the filming of almost the entire Austen canon (although sadly overlooked at the time was Roger Michell's beautifully directed version of Persuasion). The series also inspired a young writer named Helen Fielding to create a new serial column for The Independent, which she titled Bridget Jones's Diary. In what was to bloom into a best-selling book, Fielding recorded her character's own fascination with Pride and Prejudice, even allowing her to meet her own Mr. Darcy, Mark Darcy. And who better to play Mark Darcy in the film version of Bridget Jones than the BBC's own Mr. Darcy, Colin Firth?

Joe Wright's new film version of Austen's novel will not enjoy the same reputation as the BBC's production. It is a competent-enough costume pageant of the kind the English expertly toss off, and delivers a few fine performances. But it lacks the wit and depth of both the novel and the mini-series (not to mention the invention of Gurinder Chadha's recent Bollywood adaptation, Bride and Prejudice).

The primary problem is one of atmosphere. Wright's vision is often quite somber, with darkened interiors to which one repairs from the Wordsworthian swirl of cloud and rain outside. It's a Romantic tack that would work beautifully for Jane Eyre or any other Brönte enterprise, but seems not of Austen's wry world. But having said that, Wright's heightened, quivering emotionalism unfortunately leads him to some rather hilarious Mills and Boon's cliches.

Two very important scenes — Mr. Darcy's coming to inform Lizzy of his love, and the later scene where the two finally become engaged — can only be greeted with courteous scorn. The first is played during a deluge, with the two drenched characters sheltering on the porch of a park rotunda. What in the novel is played as a visit to Mr. Collin's comfortably dry vicarage here becomes a feverish, tremulous meeting in the naked elements, akin to the rain scene in Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously.

The engagement scene is strictly dime-novel romance. Rather than out for a walk together as Austen has it, the two meet by happenstance in a fog-edged paddock, Darcy manfully striding toward his beloved with his shirt awry, revealing a heroic, Byronic thatch of chest hair.

Keira Knightley is no Jennifer Ehle, who played Lizzy for the Beeb. But what Knightley lacks in intellectual spark is more than made up for by her tireless tomboyishness. In fact, she'd be ideal for Jo in the 113th film version of Little Women. Matthew Macfadyen gives a brooding and weighty reading to Mr. Darcy, but in the way one imagines perfect for Mr. Rochester.

As Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland are perfectly paired: She, garrulous and emulous, he, quiet and humorously cynical. The Lady Catherine of Judi Dench is typical for the actress. If Maggie Smith has become the screen's desiccated, burbling maiden aunt, Dench has assumed the role of widowed aunt as gorgon, and she doesn't disappoint here (though one misses Edna May Oliver's horsy hauteur as Lady Catherine in the otherwise forgettable MGM saga of 1940).