Quiz

The weather in all the Devon scenes was generally appalling. All the rain you see in this episode is real.

This was a considerable success for the BBC, attracting over 6 million viewers on first transmission. The first episode also became one of the most popular programmes on the corporation's streaming service, BBC iPlayer.

Writer Andrew Davies actively sought to play up the male roles in the series as he felt that they had largely been overshadowed by the female characters in previous adaptations. His belief was that Jane Austen would have gone to great pains to make Elinor's attraction to Edward Ferrars and Marianne's to Colonel Brandon more understandable. (The latter in particular has often appeared as almost an afterthought in previous interpretations.)

Having scored a notable success with his adaptation of Jane Austen's Orgoglio e pregiudizio (1995) 13 years earlier (for which he received Emmy and BAFTA nominations), Andrew Davies felt considerable pressure to get this adaptation right.

Made some 13 years after the Emma Thompson feature film adaptation, writer Andrew Davies said his intention with resurrecting the material was "to make people forget the Ang Lee version." To accentuate the difference, this version is more overtly sexual in tone.