Scotland on Sunday opines that, while Andrew Davies’ body of work as an adapter of literature great and popular is rightly honored, perhaps it’s time to seek out some new voices.

It is a fair bet that he will make a fine job of A Room With A View, just as he will with a scheduled remake of Brideshead Revisited, Sense and Sensibility, Little Dorrit and Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, all of which are said to be on the Davies to-do list.

Such industry is to be admired, but it doesn’t stop the growing feeling that perhaps some other voices should be heard. Davies will be 70 this year, with all the experience and perspective that that brings. However, it would be interesting to see some of these books through the filter of someone else’s experiences.

We’ve been saying the same thing for a while, not that anyone pays us the least bit of attention. (Hrmph.) Mr. Davies did a great job with P&P and not a bad job with Emma, but it would be nice for Austen fans to see their favorites through other eyes (within limits, of course!). Alas, it’s too late for Northanger Abbey. We loved the recent adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South and would like to see that adapter, Sandy Welch, work on some other classic novels. (And a perusal of the IMDB reveals that Welch is writing the upcoming BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre.)

The article mentions Gurinder Chadha’s multicultural take on P&P, BRIDE AND PREJUDICE:

As a writer and director of Bend It Like Beckham and Bhaji On The Beach, she has plenty of experience in getting to the heart of what a multicultural Britain really means. She also has previous form in translating English literature into new contexts. In 2004, she filmed her own take on one of Austen’s best-loved novels and released Bride and Prejudice, a Bollywood take on the adventures of the Bennets and Mr Darcy. Why stop there? How about a Punjabi Pickwick Papers. Perhaps television commissioners will be more inclined once they have seen the results of her big screen adaptation of the Eighties TV favourite, Dallas.

The beauty of B&P is that it was a new way of looking at P&P without destroying it. Any adapter of Jane Austen should, first and foremost, love the novel, and second, know it inside out, and not be looking to “improve” it somehow. That way lies madness, not to mention the scorn of Janeites.