Amazon's 'Vanity Fair' Offers a Thoroughly Modern Becky Sharp

Amazon's new adaptation of Vanity Fair aims to get with the times. It doesn't always work.

In this time of reboots and remakes, Vanity Fair was bound to come around again. The orginial novel, by William Thackeray, was published in the 1840s, the period piece nature and the satire of those who strive for an upper-class life fits in perfectly to the current trends in TV. Moreover, unlike other recent adaptations like The Woman in White and Little Women, Vanity Fair isn't well-trod ground. The story was popular in the 1920s and 30s, there are no less than six films made between 1911 and 1935. But the story then was left for dead until 2004 when Reese Witherspoon decided she wanted a crack at the character in the center of it, Becky Sharp. The BBC has made a few serials out of it, but most never crossed the pond, and the last one was in the 1990s.

One of the reasons Vanity Fair hasn't been popular is due to how unlikable the main character is. (The book's subtitle, "A Novel Without A Hero," is not kidding around.) For generations, the idea of putting an unlikable character at the center of a story in films was unthinkable. It was only in the last decade the rise of the "anti-hero" on television changed this perspective, and it's only been the last couple of years this "anti-hero" status has been granted to female protagonists on TV. Therefore, it should surprise no one ITV thought it was time to bring back Vanity Fair for a new generation. Finally, Becky is no longer out of step with the times.

Orphan Becky Sharp (Olivia Cooke) is the proto-feminist anti-hero of the piece, doomed to spend her life working in governess or other working class position due to the status of her birth, and determined to do something about it. To that end, she first ensnares a blind-to-ambitions BFF in Amelia (Claudia Jessie), a wealthy and kindly girl, who is perfectly complacent in her wealth until it disappears, and then she's helpless.