What If Jane Austen Wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Okay, okay... this is just a hypothesis here. Don't worry, we haven't slipped through a wormhole in time where Joss wears a crinoline and Ms Austen has a hunted expression from all the vampire dodging on a daily basis! I just want to play what if, folks, so indulge me...

Ooh, let's think about it... What would be different? It's not like vampires were invented with Buffy. 'The Vampyre' by John William Polidori is widely regarded as the first vampire story in the canon which we would recognise as such. I guess we're all voting, hands in the air and jumping up and down, for Elizabeth Bennett as the Georgian-era vampire slayer (and what a rockin' Slayer she would make, to be sure). But how would her family and associates fit in as the rest of the Scooby gang?

First up, I'm voting for Mr Collins as the Big Bad. Come on, he's practically that in the non vamped-up P & P. He would wield the supernatural twin powers of snobbery and blood-sucking, and his evil mission would be to keep the bloodlines of the British aristocracy pure - by testing them on a regular basis... Lady Catherine de Bourgh might be his partner in crime, or perhaps he would have eaten her long ago...

Mr Wickham? I have him down as a vamp too, but a hapless feckless minion to Mr Collins, kind of a Harmony-type, always trying to break out and make it big but failing miserably. He would probably try to get bitey with Lizzie and be roundly staked for his pains.

Mr Darcy himself would no doubt be an apparently contemptuous sceptic regarding ghosties, ghoulies and vampires, and then at the eleventh hour be revealed as a Watcher, bearing a sacred task passed down through his noble family to assist the Slayer in her evil-fighting duties. With his secretive dual nature and hidden life, he would come across as a little like Sherlock Holmes or the Scarlet Pimpernel. It would be great to have the foppish aristocrat revealed as a man of action, leaping about after vamps on the hilly crags of his country estate! Of course he'd be on the Watcher's Council - banging on about the Bennett girl needing the stability of marriage and babies to achieve her true Slayer potential.

Perhaps Darcy's father would have wanted Wickham to train as a Watcher too - kind of like in the original, wanting him to go into the church - and been just as frustrated by the feckless muppet's lack of dedication or familial feeling. Mr Bingley on the other hand would be a loyal Scooby, perhaps a bit Xander-like in his general helpfulness and lack of specific talents, but no doubt he would put in a lot of 'field time'. His sisters are certainly a painful pair of bloodsuckers, but I see them more as Cordelia-style human annoyances and obstacles, rather than vamps.

And how about Lizzie's gaggle of sisters? Sadly, I'm sure one of them at least would have to fall prey to vampires - or perhaps one sucked dry till death (Kitty? Who would notice?) and one vamped herself. Oh, I think this one has to be Lydia. No, make that Lydia and Mary - Mary would make a fabulous vamp. If bloodsucking failed, she could always bore her victims to death - or threaten them with a music recital. And Lydia is pretty much a vampire already, in a metaphorical sense.

Jane, or course, would be the screaming maiden, rescued at the eleventh hour from bloodsuckers, always just slightly too annoying and ineffectual to be the heroine.

Mrs Bennett? Oh my God, I suppose she should be a vamp - she certainly does her best in the original to suck the life out of her spouse and daughters. And yet I really can't see it. In fact she strikes me as being more like Mrs Summers than you might think. By that I mean I see her as first undergoing a period of appalled denial at her daughter's vocation, then, once she reaches acceptance, becoming both cheerleader and campaigner for her daughter's right to lead a normal life - as well as, not instead of, her slaying. 'Oh of course, Mrs XXXX, I always say no-one can compete with Lizzie in the matter of slayage - she stands quite alone. And yet she always keeps her petticoats immaculate from any blood taint - the verymost sign of a lady!'

And Mr Bennett - covert Watcher's Council member too, anyone? Or perhaps co-opted in after Lizzie gets the tap as the new Slayer. He would probably be the worst Watcher ever - indulgent, lazy, unconcerned, only freaking out at the Big Bad last moment, much as in the case of Lydia's elopement. And still, somehow, the job would get done (if not much thanks to him).

There you go. Wouldn't it be ace? Now all we need is for Joss to have a flash of genius and actually make it...