Sure, Mr. Darcy puts the “pride” in Pride and Prejudice and Mr. Wickham riles things up and runs off with Lydia. But Mr. Bingley’s arrival is what sets the events of the novel and every screen adaption in motion! If Charles Bingley doesn’t rent out Netherfield Park, Mrs. Bennet wouldn’t speculate about a rich husband for one of her daughters in the very first lines of the novel. Without Mr. Bingley’s arrival, there would be no Netherfield Ball for Elizabeth and Darcy to connect at. Bingley also brings his sisters to the story, for their notoriously snobby sneers that add spice to every version on film and TV. You just can’t have this story without Mr. Bingley, so let’s give him a little of the love only Jane Bennet hitherto seems to feel for the fellow. For as she describes Bingley:
“He is just what a young man ought to be … sensible, good humoured, lively; and I never saw such happy manners!—so much ease, with such perfect good breeding!”
Plus, he’s inherited nearly £100,000, so he’s very much the personification of the novel’s iconic opening sentence, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” How do these onscreen versions measure up?
Lewis Stringer in Pride and Prejudice (1938)
Bruce Lester in Pride and Prejudice (1940)
??? in Pride and Prejudice (1949)
David Markham in Pride and Prejudice (1952)
Matteo Spinola in Orgoglio e Pregiudizio (1957)
Alwyne Whatsley in Pride and Prejudice (1958)
Maxim Hamel in De Vier Dochters Bennet (1961)
David Savile in Pride and Prejudice (1967)
Osmund Bullock in Pride and Prejudice (1980)
Crispin Bonham-Carter in Pride and Prejudice (1995)
Simon Woods in Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Tom Mison in Lost in Austen (2008)
Douglas Booth in Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (2016)
Toby-Alexander Smith in An American in Austen (2024)
Aled Owen in The Other Bennet Sister (2026)
Daryl McCormack in Pride and Prejudice (upcoming)
Who’s your favorite onscreen Mr. Bingley?
As with everything else the 1995 Pride and Prejudice puts the others in the shade. Crispin is perfect!
And a non-frock flick version of Bingley is Christopher Sean, who played Bing Lee in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. He is seriously adorable!
Clearly the real winner in all this is the Bingley lucky enough to end up married to a woman who look and sounds like one whole Rosemund Pike.
Daryl is seriously yummy, might have to watch, just for him?
I’m definitely a Crispin fan, he’s as cute as a button.
I am just fascinated by the cravat in the 1952 version though, it looks like it’s about the swallow the actor whole. That’s a piece of lost media I really hope resurfaces again.