90 minSeason 1 • Episode 2
LatestIn an effort to establish herself as the new mistress of Manderley, Mrs De Winter revives the mansion's famous fancy dress ball. She is encouraged by Mrs Danvers to copy a dress from a painting of a family ancestor, but her husband is furious. Danvers's taunting reaches a climax as she declares Rebecca is still ruler at the house, just as an ominous discovery is made.
Based on the Gothic romance novel by Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca is a classic tale of love and hate. Maxim De Winter marries a woman half his age only a year after his first wife, the beautiful and accomplished Rebecca, dies. She finds herself in an aristocratic social world her middle class upbringing did not prepare her for, and housekeeper Mrs Danvers despises her for taking her darling Rebecca's place. But these are not the only problems to face...
Acting
Diana Rigg's Mrs Danvers: pure frozen malice in pearls
Production
Manderley's oppressive beauty shot through with rot
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Diana Rigg had already played Mrs Danvers in a 1980 stage adaptation; this miniseries let her refine the role into something almost sympathetically monstrous.
The 1997 version leans harder into the second wife's class insecurity than Hitchcock's 1940 film, reflecting 90s British anxieties about social mobility and Old Money gatekeeping.
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