Sense and Sensibility screenwriter watched all of Made in Chelsea for research
Sense and Sensibility screenwriter watched all of Made in Chelsea for research
Ruby ClineMon, September 14, 2026 at 9:43 AM UTC
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Andrew Davies said he watched all 31 series of the E4 reality TV show Made In Chelsea, which has aired since 2011 - Getty Images/Joe Maher
Sense and Sensibility’s screenwriter has said he watched every episode of Made in Chelsea as inspiration for his latest adaptation of an Austen novel.
Andrew Davies, who has worked on several Jane Austen stories including Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, has turned his hand to one of the author’s unfinished works.
Davies said he watched all 31 series of the E4 reality TV show Made In Chelsea, which has aired since 2011, to help bring his adaptation of The Watsons to life.
The show, which Davies said was “stimulating, really, for relationships and ideas”, has parallels to the relationships of the Watsons.
He said he was “doing things like watching the whole of Made In Chelsea” in preparation.
He told BBC Radio 4: “[The show is] stimulating really for relationships and ideas.
“These young men and women in The Watsons, for example, are very analogous to Made In Chelsea.”
Davies’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice as a BBC TV show, directed by Simon Langton, cemented the screenwriter’s reputation as a master of period dramas.
Asked whether he minded being known as the man who “sexed up” Jane Austen, Davies said: “I don’t mind it at all.
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“I was just bringing out the sex that’s inherent in it. The other thing – they’re all funny, that’s inherently there as well.”
He has since worked on TV adaptations of Vanity Fair, War and Peace and Les Misérables, as well as contemporary tales such as Bridget Jones.
Last year, the screenwriter revealed he was “having a sniff around The Watsons”.
The 18,000-word incomplete fragment, probably written around 1803, tells the story of Emma Watson, who was brought up by a wealthy aunt, returning to the household of her father, an ailing clergyman.
Other authors, including Austen’s niece in 1850, have attempted to write continuations to finish the tale.
The adaptation would continue a trend of darker Austen adaptations, including in Davies’ own work.
The screenwriter has said he is working on an adaptation of Emma in which Emma dies in childbirth, and has discussed making explicit Austen’s passing references to slavery in Mansfield Park.
He said: “It’s crazy these days to do an adaptation of Mansfield Park without going and seeing what the plantation was like. A lot of people are not going to like that.”
“Austen is inexhaustible really,” he added.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
