As the title says: WHYY (the PBS station in the Philadelphia area) is showing a Mother’s Day marathon of P&P95. From the press release with which several unrelated posts on this blog were spammed (News flash: we have an e-mail address):

WHYY TO AIR MOTHER’S DAY MARATHON OF
MASTERPIECE “The Complete Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice”
This mother’s day WHYY brings families a marathon showing of “The Complete Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice.”

How many ways can a young woman find true love amid the dinner parties, balls, carriage rides, picnics and other picturesque opportunities to meet the opposite sex in turn-of-the-19th-century England? There are six transcendently satisfying scenarios, as told in a half-dozen enchanting novels by Jane Austen — one of the most beloved writers in all of literature.

“The Complete Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice,” beginning Sunday, May 11, 2008, at 3 p.m. and running all day thru to 11 p.m. on WHYY-TV12, features the Emmy Award-winning “Pride and Prejudice” that made Colin Firth a leading man and a special half-hour program, Celebrating The Complete Jane Austen.

In “Pride and Prejudice,” Colin Firth (Bridget Jones’ Diary) is Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle (The Coast of Utopia) is Elizabeth Bennet in the definitive adaptation of the most-loved of all Austen novels. With five daughters, no sons and an entailed estate, the elder Bennets are in dire straits as they try to arrange advantageous marriages. Wedding bells ring three times, but the path to true love is tortuous indeed. Adapted by Andrew Davies. Directed by Simon Langton.

Celebrating The Complete Jane Austen is hosted by NBC correspondent and “Weekend Today” co-anchor Lisa Daniels, an avid Austen fan. “As a journalist and NBC network correspondent, I’ve been trained to maintain a neutral attitude toward my subject. When it comes to Jane Austen, that’s impossible for me to do!” confesses Daniels.

Daniels tackles the questions the most ardent Janeite would ask: Two hundred years after her death, why do Jane Austen’s novels continue to relate to modern readers? What’s in these stories for the “Sex and the City” crowd (one answer: clothes!)? And what were the challenges in bringing these novels to television?

From the Regency era to today, there are more social similarities than meet the eye. “How could Jane Austen’s 18th-century mind create characters that we read again and again now? I think it’s because her heroines are very modern. They are women who are trying to find themselves, trying to do the right things by who they are, in their way.

So it’s just P&P95, looks like…that’s not “The Complete Jane Austen” by any stretch. And wasn’t Lisa Daniels the reporter who put together a video report raving about Jane Austen’s wonderful dialogue, illustrated with movie clips that contained no dialogue that Jane Austen actually wrote? Oh, better and better!

According to Ellen Gray at the Daily News, there is a possibility that it will pre-empt the second part of Cranford here in Philly. Take it from us: much as we love Jane Austen and P&P, BIG MISTAKE. The proprietor of AUSTENBLOG is telling you this is a BIG MISTAKE. Just about every woman in America already owns P&P on DVD. Show us something new and wonderful.

If anyone wonders we are often cranky, the stupid makes our brain hurt. You would be cranky if your brain hurt, too.