Helen Fielding has been open that Bridget Jones's Diary is Pride and Prejudice with the plot borrowed wholesale, and the borrowing is not disguised: the cold, rude, rich man who turns out to be decent is called Mark Darcy. The film closes the loop. Colin Firth, who had played Austen's Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation, plays Mark Darcy here, and the casting is the joke. The charming rival who is actually the villain, the family pressure to marry, and a heroine whose first judgements are all wrong are Austen's structure carried over intact.
