I HAVE to admit, Lost in Austen wouldn’t generally be my first choice for a Wednesday night in front of the box.

But the sad reality is, sometimes someone else gets hold of the TV remote control, and there’s nothing you can do but sit and watch.

This isn’t my first exposure to the world of the Jane Austen TV adaptations, however, what with my other half being a hardened fan of her books.

But ITV’s show had a Life on Mars-style difference – one likely to wind up the purists.

Lost in Austen tells the story of 21st century Amanda Price (Jemima Rooper), a young woman with an unhealthy fascination in Austen’s works, Pride and Prejudice in particular.

Obsessed by the prim and proper manners of the era, and disappointed by her own oafish boyfriend, she soon believes she’s cracking up when Austen heroine Elizabeth Bennet turns up in her bathroom. It turns out, you see, that Amanda’s shower is a doorway from modern day Hammersmith into the fictional 19th century world of her favourite novel.

There she accidentally threatens to derail the whole story, dancing with the stroppy Darcy, accidentally flirts with the likable Bingley and nearly scandalising the Bennet family by her modern approach to courting.

Lost in Austen was actually the polar opposite of Life on Mars – the two shows might as well be snarling, time travelling arch enemies.

Whereas one is romance, good manners, and gentle culture clash humour (albeit with an edgier modern twist), the other is all boozing, swearing, violence and withering Gene Hunt insults.

But despite the lack of police brutality and Ford Cortina car chases, Lost in Austen wasn’t without charm.

It took an early stumble, though, with a branded clothing gag lifted straight from Back to The Future. As Marty McFly’s Calvin Klein logo’d undies were once mistaken for nametagged pants, Amanda was first assumed to be called Miss Spencer, on account of the major high street store where she buys her underwear.

But from then on, there was a steady stream of neatly observed gags, as Amanda knowingly commented on the unfolding story. Of course, she wondered if she was going bonkers at the same time, in between trying to get her mobile phone to work and using chalk and twigs to brush her teeth.

Just as well she bothered though, because this fun but flimsy confection of a comedy drama was liable to rot her teeth otherwise.

With Austen books regularly adapted into TV or film, there are slim pickings for new projects, so this sort of post-modern spin, which turns the whole story upside down, makes sense.

But you wonder what could be coming up next. ‘Damned in Dickens’, perhaps, where the layabout 21st century videogame addict tumbles back in time to a Victorian era workhouse to see what hard graft is really like. Or ‘The Full Bronte’ where modern-day Yorkshire steel-working strippers wander into some bad 18th century weather looking tortured, haunted and angry.

Or perhaps not.