Mrs Darcy, Episode Seventy-Seven

Ah. I’ve been a bit worried about this one. When I was originally planning Mrs Darcy, I started to work through the various characters in the original book, trying to decide what was going to happen to them. It struck me that Mary could usefully end up being radicalised and that her musical aspirations might thence lead her to an unexpected and potentially entertaining liaison. So I ended up creating the character of Robert of Mali.

It then struck me that this meant that the only person of colour with a speaking part in the book would have a somewhat restricted vocabulary, drawn entirely from the works of the late, great reggae star with a coincidentally similar name. Which seemed potentially a bit dodgy. But then I thought sod it, that’s still more diversity than Jane Austen managed. So here he is. There’s more about how he and Mary met in the next episode, with some even worse puns.