I’m a white girl, so obviously I’m familiar with the works of Jane Austen.

But I must confess my first exposure to Austen was through the reimagining of her works many years later. I’ve seen Clueless but haven’t read Emma. I didn’t read Pride and Prejudice until last year, but I’ve got the double-disc box set of Bridget Jones’ Diary in my DVD collection. I’m trying to read Sense and Sensibility but I keep getting confused about which Miss Dashwood is which, and inevitably start thinking about dagwood dogs because of the likeness in their spelling. And it’s hard to forget a dagwood dog once the idea pops into your head.     I have to say that, despite how exceedingly intelligent I like to think I am, I’m not a very well-read person. I only know the first line of Moby Dick because of the last scene in the Danny DeVito classic Matilda, and most of my other literary knowledge comes from snippets of Gilmore Girls. This is probably due to my Catholic boarding school secondary education; during my time the school tried so hard to be “liberal” and so we were not forced to read the books most other teenagers were in school. Of course we did the obligatory Shakespeare courses (although we weren’t allowed to watch Hamlet because my teacher hated Mel Gibson) but other than that, we were directed to less traditional obligatory reading like Tim Winton, or we were allowed to chose our own material – so obviously I went with the masterpieces of Gretel Killeen’s imagination about a girl named after a tampon brand. I never had to read Scarlet Letter or Lord of the Flies or even To Kill a fucking Mocking Bird – I only read that for the first time last year as well.

As such, I feel a little out of the literary loop. And as much as pleasure as I derive from the looks of horror I prompt from telling people I haven’t read an apparent classic they believe is as vital for a person to take in as oxygen, I’m making a concerted effort to catch up. What better way to ease myself into the world of “essential reading” then to start off with the romantic comedy equivalent.

This means also catching up on the screen adaptations of these sacred texts, and there is none so revered as the BBC’s mini series of Pride and Prejudice. Apparently it’s just fucking fantastic and you’re some kind of alien outcast species if you haven’t seen it. It’s supposedly much better than the more recent film version which features Keira Knightly in one of her rare roles which doesn’t involve her wearing a train driver’s cap.

I read an online article with a “definitive ranking” the Mr Darcys which crowned the BCC Darcy – Colin Firth – as lord supreme. This is partly because of the apparently highly arousing scene when he emerges from a lake in a white shirt. I’ve heard so many women banging on about this apparently rapturous scene like was the most thrilling few seconds of cinematic history. I excepted to slip right off my seat upon the sight of this sideburned deity rising from the water the way women carried on about it.

Never before I have been so underwhelmed.

I expected sodden, egg white knickers and instead I was enraged. I had sat through hours – hours! – of this garbage only to be disappointed. The scene, which in my head was like something out of a dirty Fantastia fan-flick, was pedestrian at best. There was no steam, no solid rig and there certainly weren’t any suggestive glances.

What happened was a sweaty-ish Firth jumped into a lake on his sweeping estate and was supposed to emerge from the water like a sexy butterfly triumphantly cracking out of his cocoon of dullness, sensible attire and era-appropriate haircut. Old mate looked like he was just in some dirty creek to wash out his filthy sideburns. I don’t know what a sexy creek looks like, but I do know what an unsexy creek looks like thanks to this incurability flaccid scene. The water was stagnant and had a fuckload of mossy-reeds on the bottom. There were probably catfish in there for fucks sake. He eventually hops out, probably after scrambling up a slippery creek bank and then he just walks to his house, bumping into Elizabeth on the way. There’s no slow motion or seductive panning or anything. His shirt isn’t really that see-through beyond the fact that it’s white.    Maybe I am about as cultured as a Dagwood dog. Maybe I’m not a romantic kind of person, but all I thought about was how his shirt and Firth-burns would have reeked of old dam water. The guy probably found a leech in his armpit when he got in the shower. And there’s nothing sexy about an armpit leech.

So now I’m worried. If this scene is the height of romance and smouldering sexual tension, what in the world have I to look forward to?

I rate that scene one out of ten armpit leeches.

If there’s a classical movie, series or book you think I could tear apart please make a suggestion in the comments.