Pride and Prejudice (2026)

Netflix’s Pride and Prejudice arrives on 3 December 2026, all six episodes at once. It is the first full-length screen version of the novel since Joe Wright’s 2005 film, and at six episodes it has the same running room as the 1995 BBC miniseries — the version most often cited as the novel’s most faithful screen translation. This page is the guide to who plays whom and what each episode is likely to cover. For the release announcement, first-look images and production timeline, see the Pride and Prejudice 2026 release-date tracker.

Quick facts

Premiere	3 December 2026, all six episodes
Platform	Netflix, worldwide
Format	Limited series, 6 episodes
Writer	Dolly Alderton
Director	Euros Lyn
Production company	Lookout Point
Filmed	UK, from July 2025 — London, the Peak District, Rye
Based on	Pride and Prejudice (1813)

The cast, family by family

The full cast list sits in the table above. The casting choices make more sense grouped the way Austen groups her characters, by household, because in this novel where you live and who your relations are decides nearly everything.

Longbourn: the Bennets

Emma Corrin (The Crown, Deadpool & Wolverine) plays Elizabeth Bennet and is also an executive producer on the series, their first credit in that role. Like Jennifer Ehle in 1995 and Keira Knightley in 2005, they come to the part straight off a defining screen performance. Corrin’s range runs toward watchfulness and interior conflict, which suits the Elizabeth of the second half of the book, the one who has to admit she was wrong.

Olivia Colman as Mrs. Bennet is the casting most likely to change how the family reads. Alison Steadman (1995) played the part as a social liability and Brenda Blethyn (2005) as a frazzled, loving mother. Colman is a comic actor who can also make an audience flinch. That combination fits a reading more modern adaptations have reached for: a woman whose anxiety about her daughters’ futures is entirely rational under the entail.

Rufus Sewell plays Mr. Bennet. In the novel he is the funniest person in the house and the most culpable. His detachment is part of the reason Lydia runs off, and a six-part structure leaves room for that reckoning in Volume III.

Freya Mavor plays Jane. The three younger sisters are Hopey Parish (Mary) and Hollie Avery (Kitty), both making their screen debuts, and Rhea Norwood (Lydia), known from Heartstopper, which director Euros Lyn also directed.

Netherfield and Pemberley

Jack Lowden (Slow Horses, Mary Queen of Scots) plays Mr. Darcy. Colin Firth played established authority learning humility; Matthew Macfadyen played shyness mistaken for arrogance. Lowden’s screen persona suggests a third reading: a man whose rudeness is real social incompetence rather than pride or shyness. If the series commits to it, the first proposal in Chapter 34 will play very differently from either predecessor.

Daryl McCormack (Bad Sisters, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande) is Mr. Bingley, alongside Siena Kelly as Caroline Bingley and Saffron Coomber and James Dryden as the Hursts. Isabella Sermon plays Georgiana Darcy.

Rosings and Hunsford

Fiona Shaw plays Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Judi Dench’s 2005 version was mostly grandeur. Shaw (Killing Eve, Harry Potter) is better at menace and strangeness, so expect a colder Lady Catherine. That matters most in her confrontation with Elizabeth in Chapter 56.

Jamie Demetriou as Mr. Collins is the clearest signal of how Alderton reads the book. Demetriou is a comic writer-performer (Stath Lets Flats, Fleabag) with a very specific register of oblivious self-regard. Casting him rather than a straight character actor says this adaptation treats the novel as a comedy first. Jasmine Blackborow plays Charlotte Lucas, the friend who marries him.

Meryton and Gracechurch Street

Louis Partridge (Enola Holmes, Disclaimer) plays Wickham, the youngest-skewing Wickham on screen, which makes his pursuit of the sixteen-year-old Lydia more plausible and less comfortable. The Lucases (Justin Edwards, Rosie Cavaliero), the Gardiners (Anjana Vasan, Sebastian Armesto) and the Forsters (James Northcote, Eloise Webb) are all cast with named actors. That suggests the series will keep the novel’s social machinery rather than compressing it into background. The Gardiners in particular are the relatives who take Elizabeth to Derbyshire, and without them there is no Pemberley visit.

Every Elizabeth and Darcy compared

	1995 (BBC)	2005 (film)	2026 (Netflix)
Format	6 × ~55 min	127 min	6 episodes
Elizabeth	Jennifer Ehle	Keira Knightley	Emma Corrin
Darcy	Colin Firth	Matthew Macfadyen	Jack Lowden
Mrs. Bennet	Alison Steadman	Brenda Blethyn	Olivia Colman
Mr. Bennet	Benjamin Whitrow	Donald Sutherland	Rufus Sewell
Lady Catherine	Barbara Leigh-Hunt	Judi Dench	Fiona Shaw
Mr. Collins	David Bamber	Tom Hollander	Jamie Demetriou
Wickham	Adrian Lukis	Rupert Friend	Louis Partridge
Writer	Andrew Davies	Deborah Moggach	Dolly Alderton
Director	Simon Langton	Joe Wright	Euros Lyn

The 1995 miniseries is still the benchmark for completeness and the 2005 film the benchmark for atmosphere. For all twelve versions back to the lost 1938 BBC broadcast, see every Pride and Prejudice adaptation compared.

Episode guide: reading along with the novel

Netflix has not published episode titles or synopses. Austen’s novel comes in three volumes, though, and six episodes divide it cleanly at about ten chapters each. If you want to read each part before (or after) you watch it, this is the likely split:

Episode	Chapters	What happens in the book
1	1–11	Bingley takes Netherfield; the Meryton assembly; Darcy’s slight; Jane falls ill
2	12–23	Mr. Collins arrives and proposes; Wickham’s story; Charlotte accepts Collins
3	24–34	Elizabeth visits Hunsford; Rosings; Darcy’s first proposal
4	35–42	Darcy’s letter; Elizabeth reconsiders everything; the Derbyshire tour begins
5	43–52	Pemberley; Lydia elopes with Wickham; Darcy intervenes
6	53–61	Bingley returns; Lady Catherine’s visit; the second proposal

The whole novel is free to read on this site, chapter by chapter. If you only have time for one chapter, make it Chapter 35. Darcy’s letter is the pivot of the book, and every adaptation has to solve it differently: 1995 used voice-over, 2005 had Darcy hand it over in person, and nobody yet knows what the 2026 version does. For a fuller refresher, the chapter-by-chapter summary covers the plot in about ten minutes.

Where to watch

Pride and Prejudice (2026) is a Netflix original and streams only on Netflix, in every country where the service operates, from 3 December 2026. If you want to catch up on the earlier versions first, the 1995 miniseries and the 2005 film are the two most people compare it with. The 1940 MGM film with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier is the version most people haven’t seen. Each page lists current streaming and rental options.