The Bridget Jones movies could have been very different if they had taken place in 2016.
The Bridget Jones movies could have been very different if they had taken place in 2016.
In 2001, Bridget Jones, Helen Fielding's wildly successful fictional diarist, made her screen debut. The millennium was new, the Internet Age was dawning, screenwriters still didn't think it was appropriate to use mobile phones as anything other than career signifiers.
Renee Zellweger, a Texan actress best known for her role in Jerry Maguire five years earlier, became a surprise sensation after adopting a couple of stone and Jones's Home Counties accent.
Along with Fielding's warts-and-all memoir of a woman dealing with dating, dieting and drinking, Sharon Maguire's witty adaptation earned a place in the British public's heart - as well as its box office.
Fifteen years on and Bridget Jones is back. She's pushing 40, has dumped Darcy and got, as the name of the third film in the franchise would suggest, a baby on the way. But, just as certain parts of the press seem obsessed with the apparent change in Zellweger's face, so London, technology and the lives of women have transformed since the early Noughties.
Jones may have ditched the diary for an iPad, but for those 30-somethings watching the first Bridget Jones film her life remains as fantastical as her imagined wedding to Daniel Cleaver.
Here are 13 reasons why Bridget Jones's Diary just couldn't be made today:
1. Christmas jumpers are cool now
It's the first big turn-off for Bridget. Mark Darcy may seem utterly humourless, but it's his Rudolph-inspired festive jumper that really hammers the nail into the coffin of love.
Little did Jones realise that within a decade Christmas jumpers would be something any discerning human would have tucked away in the wardrobe.
Thanks to a heady mix of revived popularity for vintage fashion, irony and the festive season's worst calendar date: Christmas Jumper Day - the one time when Simon from accounts allows his "kooky" sides to come out - Darcy's jumper would prompt witty repartee, rather than the admission that Bridget's future mother-in-law has dreadful taste in presents (and who gives someone a Christmas jumper on New Year's Eve?).
2. There is absolutely no way any of them would live in those houses
Shortly after the successful release of Bridget Jones's Diary,The Times published a story on the beneficial impact of the film on the rent values of the cavernous bachelor pad occupied by publishing boss Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), located near London Bridge.
It read: "It is a stonking great pseudo-penthouse on the river, probably owned by an investment banker, and an ideal bachelor pad."
Shortly after Sharon Maguire, the director, completed filming at the penthouse it was placed on the rental market. The owners clearly saw the opportunity to cash in on the success of the film.
They got £2,000 a month for the unfurnished flat, which sounds steep, but probably reflects its prime location: it has three double bedrooms, two reception rooms with views of the river and a car parking space for a Porsche.
Three years ago, a three-bedroomed house on Clink Wharf, the location of the filmed apartment, was available to rent for £2,250 per week - or a casual £9,750 per month.
As for Bridget's spacious period flat in the middle of Borough Market? The average rent for a one-bedroom flat in SE1 in 2016 works out at just shy of £2,000 per month.
On the salary of a publicist in a publishing house, she would more likely be living in a shared house in Hackney, Peckham or, if she was lucky, Brixton, where rents hover between £500-800 per month.
3. Nobody waits their "whole life to meet" anyone anymore
Even in Bridget Jones's Baby, Jones doesn't get with the system and create a dating profile on one of the many romance-based apps available today.
But in 2001, online dating was in its infancy and smartphones didn't exist, so it was impossible to swipe right on anything, let alone one's future husband.
Thanks to dating apps, British people have slowly come around to a more relaxed dating culture - not dissimilar to that which inspired the rampant man-switching of Sex and the City three years before Bridget Jones's Diary was released. As a result, the notion of "The One" feels outdated.
There may be some women waiting around for Mr Right, but there are far more interesting ways to spend one's time in 2016 - even if that includes browsing on Bumble.
4. Bridget wouldn't idly kill time watching Fraiser
See above. Also, her TV would probably be a laptop, and it would probably be showing Made In Chelsea, watched from behind the glow of her iPhone screen, while flipping between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the aforementioned dating apps.
5. Forget Whitney
By Bridget Jones's Baby our heroine has bravely abandoned Whitney for House of Pain. Not a bad shout, but if you were remaking Bridget Jones's Diary today, she wouldn't be bellowing along to All By Myself, but Dancing On My Own by Robyn (as shown to triumphant effect in Girls, season one).
If she'd been organised enough to get hold of it, 2016 Bridget would trade in Whitney for Beyoncé's fiercely vengeful Lemonade. Boy, bye.
6. There is no way you could cast Shirley Henderson
For nearly all millennials she is Moaning Myrtle, forever and always.
Her first scene, which involves crying about a boy in a toilet, does not help the association. This casting just could never happen.
7. Guacamole
We love avocado. We love avocado so much that it has spawned several dozen colour supplement features over the past three years.
Bridget, as with many women of her age, would have undoubtedly Instagrammed some "avo on toast #eatclean", and probably made it herself as an attempt at a superfood-based snack.
So the guacamole and chips that fuel Bridget and her pals' debrief of the Daniel Cleaver situation would probably still be present, but the portion would be considerably smaller, and there would be no waiters dancing in the background - branches of Chiqitos are closing nationwide for a reason.
You can swap that enormous bottle of tequila for three mojitos, too. They would probably cost the same amount, too.
8. Enough with the Hackney carriages
All of these people live in central London, near tube stations. Why they are not utilising the efficient - and increasingly 24-hour - London Underground is beyond me.
However, if Bridget and co really were keen to get a cab, they would unfailingly order an Uber.
9. She would never just walk into a job in TV
Bridget's swift and easy segway into television presenting is such a far cry from today's millennial career woes it's borderline depressing.
Few people use newspapers for job advertisements. Try an app for that, or endless online browsing, at the least, with some catch-all emails delivered to one's inbox daily.
After finding a suitable advert (there would not be more than three), Bridget would have to undergo a rigorous application process to be within a chance of an interview. If she didn't have at least a year's worth of soul-destroying, unpaid or minimum-wage salaried internships, she wouldn't even get a look-in.
In fact, the only thing that remains vaguely realistic about the whole job-hunting affair is that she's only interviewed by men, who continue to occupy the majority of senior positions in media, as with most industries.
10. We wish getting ready for a date had changed
Arguably, women still put themselves through this much cleaning, preening and shaving before a particularly important date in 2016.
But it's such a banal concept that the brilliant Rachel Bloom has parodied it in her musical sitcom, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, via the Sexy Getting Ready Song (in which she applies structural underwear, for what it's worth).
Also - as if anyone actually has time to go home (to their Zone 2 flat) between work and a drinks party.
11. Smartphones change everything
These would, alas, remove some of the film's more comedic moments.
While I've always be bemused as to why Bridget would a) pick up the phone post-coitus b) announce as such down the receiver, she certainly wouldn't do it in 2016 as her mother's name would flash up on the screen before she answered.
See also how Cleaver's wildly inappropriate emails (which would never exist because they are stone-cold evidence for a work-based sexual harassment case), would ping through on Jones's phone.
Bridget would still forlornly check for messages - but it wouldn't be on via an answerphone, just with the relentless pressing of her home screen button.
If Bridget did spin, she'd be doing it at one of those east London classes that play techno and operate entirely in darkness.
But I feel, somehow, that she would be more into yoga, or one of its faddier cousins - bikram, barre and, most likely, the one that comes with an accompanying brunch.
13. Her pole-sliding wouldn't be confined to daytime TV
That's the kind of thing that would go instantly viral. Bridget's bum would be on Twitter, Facebook and, inevitably, most of the websites of national newspapers. She should think herself lucky.
