Television series

Vanity Fair

Name: Vanity Fair
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 1998
Cast: Natasha Little, Anton Lesser, Nathaniel Parker, Nick Dunning, Sylvestra Le Touzel

Other titles called Vanity Fair: the 2004 film, the 2018 series (ITV1).

Period drama

Thackeray's masterpiece finds Becky Sharp clawing her way up Georgian society through wit, beauty and shameless calculation. She's a born performer in a world of dupes and disappointments. The BBC production strips away sentimentality and lets you watch a smart woman weaponise her charm against rigid class. It's smart, darkly funny, and morally unsettled—you'll find yourself rooting for someone you shouldn't.

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like a heroine you cannot quite root for, and sharp period dialogue where every polite remark hides a knife.

Skip it if you want warm characters to cheer on, since almost everyone here is vain, pompous or wilfully blind, and the pace is leisurely across six hour-long episodes.

What it asks of you: Six hour-long episodes told at a patient, talky pace, where the wit lives in what people say rather than what they do.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

North & South2004

Margaret Hale navigates love and industrial upheaval with steel beneath charm. Like Becky, she's clever and principled but in a wholly different register—earnest where Becky is amoral. Equally gripping and beautifully made.

But It's sincere in ways Vanity Fair actively resists. If you watch for cynicism, this will feel almost wholesome by comparison.

Sense and Sensibility2008

Elizabeth and Marianne Dashwood navigate marriage, money and choice with grace under pressure. Austen's wit and the exploration of women making their way in constrained circumstances feel ancestral to Becky Sharp's story.

But It privileges virtue in ways Vanity Fair finds laughable. The tone is warmer, less ruthless.

Bleak House2005

Dickens' sprawling novel becomes a jewel. The scheming, the paralysis of Victorian society, characters climbing and failing—Bleak House is Vanity Fair's angrier cousin, with even less mercy for the innocent.

But It's thirty hours, and the opening act is genuinely confusing. The darkness is relentless rather than playful.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Vanity Fair

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Death of Louis XIV2016

Both are fascinated by how power and status are pure theatre—who's watching, who believes, who's performing for whom. Vanity Fair makes it thrilling; this makes it funereal. They're the same idea in opposite moods.

Luc Bondy's film watches aristocracy collapse through protocol and ritual. No plot, just the machinery of court grinding toward dissolution. Like Vanity Fair, it understands that society is pure performance—but here the performance can't hold anymore.

But It's nearly silent and glacially paced. Some will find it profound; others will find it insufferable. It makes no concessions to dramatic momentum.

Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet has Becky's wit and independence but channels them toward genuine love rather than merely calculated advancement. The romance redeems the satire in ways Vanity Fair refuses.

But If you come for moral ambiguity, you'll find it resolved. It's too generous to its characters for Vanity Fair fans looking for something tougher.

Wives and Daughters1999

Molly Gibson observes society's hypocrisies with Becky's sharp eye but remains decent. Elizabeth Gaskell explores women's constrained choices and the cost of social climbing on the emotionally intelligent.

But It's elegiac rather than exhilarating. The mood is reflective sadness, not Becky's delirious energy.

The Buccaneers2023

Edith Wharton's unfinished novel becomes a fever dream. American heiresses descend on London society to exploit it. The satire is sharper, the ambition more nakedly about money, the chaos more gleeful.

But It's fragmentary and occasionally feels incomplete—because it was. The tone is slighter, less probing.

Middlemarch1994

An entire provincial world turning on ambition, marriage and self-deception. Dorothea and Rosamond offer contrasts to Becky Sharp's worldview. It's vast, intricate, and rewards close attention like few things do.

But It's four hours and deeply interior. If you want Vanity Fair's surface glitter and plotting, this will feel slow and psychologically dense.

Emma2009

Emma Woodhouse plays at matchmaking with Becky Sharp's confidence in her own superiority. The satire of self-delusion feels kindred. Austen's eye for hypocrisy and the gap between what we think and what's true.

But Emma remains deeply likeable despite her flaws. Becky doesn't ask for your forgiveness. The registers are fundamentally different.

Casanova2005

Both centre on amoral, brilliant characters who survive through performance and sexual magnetism. Both understand that charm is a tool, not a personality. Becky is the female inversion—she plays wife instead of lover, but the mechanism is identical.

Heath Ledger as the great seducer, scrambling, reinventing himself, exploiting desire the way Becky exploits marriage markets. Visually lavish and darkly funny about a man who has nothing but charm and uses it ruthlessly.

But It's scattered and occasionally silly. The tone veers between satire and camp. Some scenes misfire. The plot is thinner than the style.

Pinocchio1940

Both are obsessed with transformation and what it costs. Pinocchio learns to want the right things; Becky never does. Watch them back-to-back and you get a complete argument about human nature and whether character is destiny or just luck.

Disney's animation, yes, but watch it as a moral philosophy. A boy with no roots, no family, no inheritance must become human through learning right from wrong. It's a Vanity Fair inversion—where Becky ascends without learning anything, Pinocchio learns everything and ascends anyway.

But It's a children's film, which creates a tonal jar. The moralising is explicit and earnest. You have to be willing to meet it where it stands, not where you expected animation to be.