Oh, period dramas. There’s nothing like getting lost in a romantic narrative about a plucky heroine and her brooding throng of potential suitors to make you mentally gloss over the realities of personal hygiene in 19th century Europe. I’ve seen multiple adaptations of all my favorites, and I’m not terribly loyal to any particular version. Shirtless Firth or MacFadyen in the fog, Mia Wasikowska’s quiet dignity or Ruth Wilson’s magnificent eyebrows–why choose when you don’t have to? Still, it can be fun to compare different takes on classic characters when you just can’t get enough of the exploits of emotionally repressed, sexually frustrated white people (although you could just come visit me in Upstate New York; there are a lot of us here). Prepare the fainting couch and butter your crumpets, because it’s time for a period piece showdown.
We’re diving right in with one of Austen’s most unwelcome house guests, Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Collins, played by Tom Hollander in the 2005 film and David Bamber in the 1995 BBC miniseries. My favorite Austen characters are those bit players, neither heroes nor villains, who are incredibly annoying in a way that instantly brings at least ten Facebook friends to mind, usually relatives you can’t unfollow in good conscience or former high school classmates whose adult lives hold a squeamish fascination. Just imagine how many times Mr. Collins would check into Rosings on Foursquare. How he’d tag all his status updates #Blessed and link to articles from The Onion in earnest outrage.
For those of us who have suffered the occasional (“occasional”) bout of social anxiety, Mr. Collins also represents a specific fear: Being That Guy. Intruding, talking too much, boring people, making fools of ourselves.
Worrying about such a thing implies humility and self-awareness, which almost guarantees that we are not, in a fact, That Guy, but the terrible possibility remains: if there’s no Mr. Collins on your Facebook feed, does that mean you’re the Mr. Collins? Probably not, but just to be sure, don’t make any moves on your cousins’ inheritance. Or on your cousins themselves.
So, which actor’s take on this usurper of family estates and total creeper reigns supreme? Let’s find out!
We’ll start with the likely underdog.
Aw, that’s not so bad! Sure, he’s come to lay claim to both a Bennet sister and all their property once Mr. Bennet kicks it, but he’s kind of cute.
…For a dude who thinks women are interchangeable. (Except for Lady Catherine de Bourgh, of course. Do you know Lady Catherine de Bourgh? Mr. Collins knows Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Did you know Mr. Collins knows Lady Catherine de Bourgh? Because he does. #MayorOfRosings #Blessed)
“Oh, someone already called dibs on the blonde? That’s cool, I’ll take the brunette.”
Oof. We’ve all been there, no? On both sides.
Still, he’s bearable, right? But I’d argue that it’s actually 2005 Collins’ relative inoffensiveness that makes the prospect of being married to him so depressing, because we’ve all had a 2005 Collins. We weren’t attracted to him (or her), we didn’t even like him, but he was there, and eager, and it seemed clear to us, in our darker moments, that no one better was coming along. We almost managed to convince ourselves that life with him would be fine, maybe even happy, and then he’d say something like “I’m not racist or anything, but–” or “I mean, you wouldn’t leave your car unlocked and expect not to get robbed, you know?” and we knew that settling for this person would mean the slow, steady death of our soul.
Pretty flower, though!
Referring to women as “females” and helpfully explaining why your disinterest in him is wrong: red flags in any century.
Also, yes, that is absolutely the body language of two people who are comfortable enough with each other to consider a lifelong partnership. How did this plan fail?
Oh, Charlotte. At least your children will be tiny and adorable, like wee little gnomes.
Next up: the big guns.
Mr. David Bamber does not play around, friends. He is here to lay it on, and lay it on thick.
Ugh.
UGH.
The teeth, they go on forever. I feel his eyeballs on my skin.
Not being able to pretend you weren’t home when a distant relative or acquaintance showed up, expecting you to room and board their stranger ass, would be the worst thing about living in the past, apart from the lack of yoga pants and almost literally everything else.
But at least Mr. Collins understands the ladies! He knows all about the ladies. You might be interested in reading his series of pamphlets, The Delicate Art Of Seducing Elegant Females.
The topics include “Earning Her Gratitude By Reminding Her Of Her Lower Station,” “Name-Dropping To Increase Your Marriage Market Value,” and “No Means Yes, Unless She Really Means No, In Which Case Dissolving The Union Was All Your Idea Anyway Because She Is Clearly Is Unsuitable And Not Even That Comely.”
This is the face of a woman who’s been spared a lifetime of throwing up in her mouth.
So, which Collins is the best? (…Or worst. Most Collins-y?) Both actors clearly had a blast playing the role–and got paid for acting like clueless assholes; I really need to stop doing that for free–and they make me laugh and cringe every time. Hollander’s stiffness and Bamber’s oiliness suit their respective films, and it’s probably not fair to pit such different interpretations against one another. But who cares about fair? There can only be one winner, and for me, the choice is clear:
Congratulations, sir. Please accept this Photobucket sticker crown.
And Tom, good show, but you’re just too tolerable.
What do you think? Who wins the very important battle of Collins vs. Collins?
Tags: blessed, jane austen, movies, mr collins, period pieces, theresa couchman
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1995 Collins is creepy in an over-the-top and obnoxious way. I would argue that 2005 Collins is creepy in a serial-killer way. Maybe Lady Catherine de Bourgh ends up buried in the basement of the parsonage. 1995 Collins all the way.
Aaaand just like that, you’ve persuaded me to watch the more recent P&P.
I’ve only seen the 2005 version once, and truthfully, 1995 is definitive for me. All other P&Ps can only be compared to it. None will ever surpass it.
The trouble with Tom Hollander is that he is cute. Maybe not totally mind-shatteringly hot, but cute enough that you wouldn’t instantly be embarrassed to be seen in his presence (until he opens his mouth). Bamber is just… oily. He’s almost Dickensian in his over-the-top obsequious lack of redeeming qualities. And the authoress of this lovely post is SO RIGHT about his Facebook persona.
“Dickensian”* is precisely the word I’ve used to describe him, too; like Mrs. Bennet and a handful of other just slightly over-the-top Austen characters, he feels like an intruder from a Dickens’ novel.
This isn’t to find fault with Austen’s characterizations; there are people like that in any social group, and they stand out just as the smarmiest or most ridiculous characters in Austen’s world do. I think most of us know some people who feel like they’ve stepped out of over-characterized novels of one kind or another.
*with all respect to The Wire.
The Toast is KILLING it today. I’m trying not to link to everything on FB with the comment, “This is relevant to my interests!” by which I mean none of you fools understand me like the Toast does.
ALSO: men who refer to women as females = red flag. YES. I’ve been trying to explain to people why this is the worst, and now I feel that you either get it immediately or you never will.
A get-more-women-into-science campaign did it recently:
https://mobile.twitter.com/tcetoday/status/582463…
I don’t understand how people can still do this post-Ferengis.
This is the most perfect article in the history of ever.
I feel his eyeballs on my skin. made me LOL for real.
RIGHT!?? This left me convulsing with cry-cackling. Y’all just get it.
Also, Guy Henry as Collins in “Lost in Austen.” He’s the grossest of all the Collinses, though David Bamber is still my favorite because he’s so funny.
Oops, sorry for the double posting!
Also, Guy Henry as Collins in “Lost in Austen.” He’s the grossest of all the Collinses, though David Bamber is still my favorite because he’s so funny.
Yes! I was coming down here to suggest the Lost in Austin Mr. Collins. He’s just so delightfully skeezy.
Yes! The finger sniffing. SO. GROSS.
There is no win condition in being Mr Collins.
“Earning Her Gratitude By Reminding Her Of Her Lower Station,”
OH SNAP, Mister Collins is negging Lizzie. How did I never notice that? Mister Collins is a PUA.
(Is is Austen Day at The Toast? Please let it be Austen Day at The Toast. Or you could just happen to post multiple Jane Austen articles all the time, that’s swell, brb am writing an advice column from Austen heroines’ mothers.
I’m having a slow Wednesday, and I want to read about two dozen Period Piece Showdowns in a row, RIGHT NOW. Also, ready for the advice column from Austen heroines’ mothers!
Mr. Collins as a PUA is the most accurate thing in the history of things. Nothing else even needs to be said about the character forevermore.
I wonder if modern day Collins would be a fedora wearing brony.
I only ever saw all of the latest P&P, the one with MacFadyen (hellllllllllo, sir) but just those pictures of the miniseries Collins is making my skin itch!
It has been FARRRR too long since I last saw the 2005 P&P.
Also, I am thankful to Mallory and Nicole for posting good awesome non-holiday-specific content today since I am at work and trying (though failing) not to think about stuffing and pumpkin pie quite yet.
Tom Hollander, always and forever. Just because he once played a character called “The Fucker”.
Dude has range!
You forgot his favorite pamphlet, “Little Delicate Compliments Which Are Always Acceptable To Ladies”. For those times when you wish to give your little elegant compliments as unstudied an air as possible!
Mr. Collins would be the type of guy to think that ladies appreciate (little delicate) compliments about how skinny they look.
Shelves in the closet. Happy thought indeed.
I’m just so #Blessed that The Toast loves talking about Jane Austen as much as I do.
Mallory and Nicole always show such #affability and #condescension!
The thing which I really kinda like about the 2005 P&P are the ways they distinguished themselves from the 1995 (because gold standard) and Collins for me was one of the standouts. Bamber is greasy and offputting and hopelessly ridiculous. In a way it undermines Charlotte as a character because holy hell, being shackled to that for life is not a good, measured, practical decision that she would condone. But Hollander’s is kinda a pathetic weirdo, who makes not great choices, has a word vomit problem, and is desperate to devote himself to things/people – which I think simultaneously makes him more sympathetic and makes Charlotte’s choice more reasonable/plausible.
Secondsies/thirdsies for an Austen day 🙂
I agree. As much as I love the 1995 version, the big downside for me is the extremeness of Collins and Mrs Bennet, who are so incredibly awful and so incredibly over the top and so incredibly ridiculous and so incredibly obnoxious and so incredibly unbearable (seriously, Mrs Bennet feels like Terry Jones/any Monty Python playing a woman, she’s so awful I have to fast forward every scene she’s in, as it’s like nails on a chalkboard) there is no way in God’s green earth that either Charlotte or Mr Bennet would have ever considered for even a desperate second to marry either of them. 2005 Collins was still awkward, unctuous, misogynist and boring; but it was at least possible that Charlotte could attempt to be somewhere in the vicinity of okay living with him–after all, Austen’s Charlotte says that while Elizabeth might not have been happy with him, it didn’t mean that no one else could. 1995 Charlotte would have lasted a week and run away screaming and not stopped screaming or running until she reached the furthest point away in the world she could go to get away from him.
To be fair, I have an aunt who is pretty much exactly like Mrs Bennet. I can’t imagine how much worse she would be if she didn’t have a job and some kind of personal agency, and instead had to live EVEN MORE vicariously through her daughter than she already does.
I hadn’t considered that about Charlotte’s choice, which you would think I would have because she is absolutely my favourite character. I suppose the bombast of her own father in the 1995 version makes me feel like managing a foolish husband might already be in her skillset, and her idea of a nice home life perhaps not diminished by it. Mad props to Lucy Scott for acting the shit out of that role.
I haven’t seen the 2005 version, I guess I’d better skip it up the queue, huh? ALSO can we please have one of these showdowns about every single character in every Austen adaptation ever?
This is great and factually correct and I hate to be a wang, but: “disinterested” is not the same as “uninterested”. I’ve seen people using it that way a lot in the comments here and elsewhere, but not in an article that I can remember, and it drives me crazy because it’s apparently something that even intelligent people have come to accept now/aren’t aware of (or even use thinking they’re being fancier). Disinterested means impartial. Uninterested means not interested. We need both of these words.
Comments are not turned off? *does that little waggly paws thing Lucifer the cat does in “Cinderella” when he’s figured out under which teacup Gus is hiding*
Yes, this is absolutely right.
Yo, look how into him Mary is in the 1995 P&P screenshot.
I always thought that was the unsung love affair of the whole book.
Oh he and Mary were a match made in heaven (“heaven”) and no one saw it and it was awful. Except that Lady Catherine would have eaten poor Mary alive, and Charlotte had at least a shot at surviving a lifetime of her patronage.
The depiction of Mary is just about the only way that the 2005 version is better than the 1995. 1995 Mary was a Victorian misogynist’s vision of an ‘intellectual female’: ugly, humorless and stupid. 2005 Mary was a sweet girl who desperately wanted to be good at something compared to her sisters who had already cornered the market on beautiful, witty and vivacious.
I noticed on one of my many, many rewatchings of 1995 P&P that in the scene in which Mr. Collins asks Lizzy for the first two dances at the Netherfield Ball, there’s a split second in which Mary thinks he’s referring to her. You can actually see her face light up and then fall again instantly. It’s brilliant and subtle and sad.
Y’all! The other day I watched Bride and Prejudice and Nitin Ganatra is an amazing Collins. So creepy, so sleazy, such a sycophant and so in love with himself. He is the perfect nightmare of what life in America could be to Lalita. And there’s the moment in the “No Life Without Wife” song when he’s fucking ROARING on the big round ping-and-teal bed in “Kholiwood” that couldn’t be more perfect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms9xmBn7Z-Y
(But I still give the crown for ‘creeps me out in myriad disturbing ways’ to the ’95 vintage.
Oh my god I forgot about that glorious gem of a movie.
This is my last week of work for the year, guess who is having an Austen movie marathon next week?
There is no respect in which the 2005 P&P is superior, except–perhaps–the casting of more obviously attractive people for the roles of Jane and Wickham.
I am actively affronted by the 2005 movie; it has little to no characterization of the secondary characters, and the main characters are way, way off in a substandard Bronte novel, moonily and moodily gazing at themselves in mirrors or into the distance.
The director, Joe Wright, certainly has an eye for the picturesque, but he needs to leave adaptations of literature for which he has little respect or understanding–except as vehicles for Keira Knightley–alone.
I completely agree. The 2005 ‘Brontefying’ of P&P made me furious. Lady Catherine de Bourgh visiting in the middle of the night? Miss Bingley in a sleeveless dress? Lizzy and Darcy running about in the mist and kissing? It’s outrageous!
There were so many infuriating moments, like when they utterly ignored Regency etiquette for cheap laughs when the footman introduced the Bennet girls as: ‘Miss Bennet, Miss Bennet, Miss Bennet, Miss Bennet and Miss Bennet’. Or when Charlotte Lucas screams, ‘DON’T JUDGE ME, LIZZY!’ Could there be a more anachronistic, 20th century sentiment?
Worst of all was the way that the script replaced Jane Austen’s beautiful, witty dialogue with clunky, awkward lines for no reason. The scene where Lizzy plays the piano at Rosing replaces the line, ‘I do not play this instrument so well as I would wish, because I would not take the time to practice’* with the snarky ‘Why don’t you take your aunt’s advice?’*
*All dialogue paraphrased from memory.
I burst into hysterical tears after seeing the 2005 film in theaters. I am not ashamed; the adaptation was more like a desecration. I’m just impressed I managed to keep it together until I got into the car. Possibly related: I still watch the 1995 miniseries ALL THE TIME.
That still reigns as the grimmest I have felt leaving a movie theatre.
On the upside, once upon a time (2000) someone I barely knew from the internet just up and sent me the BBC version on DVD. It may be the single moment that made me decide this whole internet thing was going to be a positive in my life.
(I am going to throw in a mention here of Maxwell Glick as Ricky Collins in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries – the most hilarious, adorably obnoxious Mr. Collins of them all. I just want to pinch his obnoxious, well-meaning cheeks. )
Yes, he’s great!
So many parts of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries are wonderful, but Ricky Collins is one of the best.
Yes! Ricky – sorry, Mr. Collins – was adorable! Still a clueless blowhard, but in a charming way.
There’s no question in my mind that Bamber was the superior Mr. Collins and probably will own the role forever. He was just so much fun to watch. And he’s a great actor. I just finished watching HBO’s Rome and was surprised to see him playing Cicero. His Cicero is as subtle and sympathetic as Mr. Collins is over-the-top and hilariously cringe-y.
I was just about to post that I hated that Bamber’s magisterial Mr. Collins ruined his Cicero for me, because I couldn’t unsee Mr Collins, and it felt like Cicero was being portrayed with some, er, Collinsian sycophancy and unsympathy (I’m not saying that Cicero has to be a dashing saint (tho’ a miniseries about dashing, idealistic young Cicero taking on Verres would be awesome) but some sympathy for a man having to make hard choices in a world where the rules don’t work anymore, please!)
So basically, 2005 Mr Collins is Wesley Snipes from 30 Rock?
Nothing can shake my love for Tom Hollander – he is forever Osborne Hamley to me…
David Bamber did this great interview with Den Of Geek last month about P&P and a whole load of other things. (Warning! Contains possible spoilers/too much info for WHAT REMAINS – the recent mystery drama he starred in.)
He’s also awesome in Rev., a (free!) Hulu series about the disillusioned vicar of a parish in a seedy London neighborhood. It’s effing funny too, especially if you know anything about typical church life or the people who make a living there.
I’m afraid this whole competition is moot because Mr. Collins from the 1980 BBC adaptation is clearly the best (that version also had the best Mrs. Bennett, btw).
oh, heavens, Malcom Rennie. http://tinyurl.com/mcnupgk
The first time I saw Tom Hollander was in Pirates of the Caribbean movies 2 and 3 as the main (non-cephalopod) antagonist. P&P 2005 came on TV one time and I had the flu or some shit and I was so damn confused because wHY THE HELL IS CUTLER FUCKING BECKETT FLIRTING WITH HER ROYAL MAJESTY ELIZABETH SWANN. WHY.
I need to rewatch it at some point when I am not half dead…
GOD, that little finger-crimping wave in the first pic of David Bamber…my friend and I in high school had one of those oh-so-sixteen-year-old routines built up around that moment in the movie; at the most inopportune times, one of us would do that to the other (making the face too, of course) and we would both giggle like crazy. Usually this happened in some kind of school assembly and then we’d get in trouble. (I was a badass in high school, what can I say?)
Remember the bit where bamber-collins walks in on lydia when shes in her petticoats, is shocked and then he tries to walk away in a dignified manner, only to hear the sound of hysterical teenage girl laughter? Me and my dad act that bit out all the time. We alternate between who is lydia and who is collins.