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Escapist froth

James Delingpole

Wednesday, 3rd September 2008

Lost in Austen (ITV1)

Before I get on to TV, can I tell you about my horrible health-scare thing, oh, can I, can I? Right, well I’ve been having this horrible health-scare thing and I’ve been out of my mind with worry — to the point where I’ve been saying, ‘Oh, please, God, let it just be cancer...’

Very likely it will prove in the end to be all purely psychosomatic — I am the most dreadful hypochondriac: not that that stops it feeling any less real — and what I’ve vowed to do if I come out the other side is to stop whingeing about my life so much. I shall try to learn to see myself more as others see me — really quite famous and successful and jealous-hatred-inducing — rather than as I see myself: total loser and failure in utter dead-end profession. And if I am in a dead-end profession (which no amount of major-disease-escaper’s euphoria will ever persuade me I’m not) then I need to do more to plot my exit strategy. Anyone got any bright ideas?

Meanwhile, TV. It would be kind of bathetic if the last piece I ever wrote was a TV review about a charming but inconsequential ITV1 drama series about a modern-day Jane Austen fan who walks through a mysterious portal in her bathroom and finds herself transported into the world of Pride and Prejudice. But you don’t get to choose, do you?

Lost in Austen (ITV1) was one of those drama ideas you’re predisposed to loathe. For one thing, most of us, I imagine, fancy ourselves to be pretty major Austen experts (she’s the only major author whose complete works I’ve read, at any rate) and are consequently more than usually ready to pounce on the slightest infelicity of tone, characterisation or historical accuracy.

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