Jane Austen's romantic classic and incisive character study has been made no less than five times for television and only one on the big screen.

However, it is the BBC's seminal 1995 outing - starring Colin Firth as Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth - that is lodged in many people's minds as the definitive version.

To a legion of lovesick female fans Firth is Darcy in the same way that countless spy movie fans concur that Sean Connery is James Bond.

Director Joe Wright banishes that memory with a superlative retelling of the story that manages to avoid the stereotypes of the Regency period on film.

It helps that Knightley - a luminous actress whose subtle skills are really allowed to shine - comprehensively inhabits the role of Elizabeth, the forthrightly intelligent heroine.

As one of the five Bennet sisters, the whole family faces penury unless they are married off successfully with no accommodation necessarily made for love.

When Elizabeth first meets Darcy (MacFadyen) he strikes her as, well, a miserable git although her dislike is tempered by a fleeting curiosity.

However, when she learns - second-hand - that's he's behaved in most ungentlemanly manner her fascination is blunted...but never completely snuffed out.

Wright uses the shifting sands of their relationship to point up a wider social drama - the disintegration of the upper classes and the stiff restrictive manners of the period.

He's helped by a richly drawn gallery of characters - Tom Hollander's appallingly pompous Mr Collins, Sutherland's kindly but weak Mr Bennet and Dame Judi Dench - who else? - as the arrogantly vulgar Lady Catherine de Bourg.

However, it is the genuine chemistry between Knightly and MacFadyen - whose Darcy is colder yet more vulnerable than Firth's - who provide a powerful emotional drive.

It's film-making that honours the source material while unashamedly taking from it a social relevance. It's also very moving.

Magnificent stuff.

Tim Evans