Austen: Persuasion (1971, 1995, 2007)

Jane Austen has always been a popular candidate for television and film adaptation - her major novels (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion) have never been out of print and have proved to be excellent subjects for dramatisation and/or adaptation.

Granada's 1971 version of 'Persuasion' is often remembered as the one with awful costumes and big hair, but across a four hour running time it is perhaps the most faithful to the original novel. Ann Firbank may be a little long in the tooth for the character of Anne Elliott (Anne is in her twenties, Firbank was around forty), but she certainly has the right acting style; opposite her as Captain Wentworth, Bryan Marshall is very close to the naval officer presented in the books.

In 1995 a television film from the BBC became probably the best loved version. In this, Amanda Root is a quiet and pensive Anne, while Ciaran Hinds (an actor who sometimes completely misses the mark in period drama) is a note-perfect Wentworth. Clearly with a much shorter running time - around 100 minutes - it can't cover all the plotlines in the book, but it feels much more cinematic than the earlier version.

Finally, in 2007, there was another version done for television and presented on ITV, this time featuring Sally Hawkins as a rather modern Anne and Rupert Penry-Jones as a dour Wentworth. This time the running time was even shorter - around 90 minutes - and many characters didn't feel like those written by Austen at all. This was Persuasion for a younger audience who valued the modern world - not a bad thing, but very different to what had gone before. This drama will probably be remembered as the one with all the running about!