Jane Austen has been providing us with Sunday-evening viewing fodder ever since someone had the ratings-winning idea of putting gowns and tight breeches on primetime TV. But as Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy celebrate their 200th anniversary of appearing in print, the best Austen adaptation around at the moment isn't an Oscar-tipped film or a lush BBC dramatisation – it's a series of 10-minute YouTube videos, with accompanying in-character tweets. And it's modern-day. And American.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries calls itself an "innovative, original episodic video and social media series produced for the web". Actually, it's an addictive bi-weekly retelling of Pride and Prejudice, in which Darcy is a hipster, Lizzie is a beleaguered grad student and her mother is just as desperate to get her married off as in the original. It's Clueless for the web generation as viewers experience the story in real time and Lizzie's videos get interrupted by her sisters, friends – and a certain brooding hero. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries started last April and, 80 episodes later she's finally at Pemberley Digital, that is, only to find out that the CEO of her new internship is none other than the man she loves to hate.

In theory, it should be terrible. In practice, it's pure genius.

In Hank Green and Bernie Su's new adaptation of Austen's 1813 novel, Ashley Clements plays a smart, spiky and occasionally dislikable Lizzie whose caustic video diaries about her overbearing mother and party-girl younger sister have drawn in a new generation of viewers. Daniel Gordh's Darcy, a socially awkward rich kid with a taste for bow ties that puts the Doctor to shame, is initially every bit as stiff and pretentious as Lizzie sees him – but recent events have shown him in a different light, with something approaching a sense of humour.

It's a smart choice: while previous adaptations have stuck to the snooty-but-smouldering line, here we have real reason to believe that Darcy is actually a stuck-up idiot, making his stammered confession of more-than-friendly feelings towards Lizzie even more of a shock and the gradual revelation of a compassionate side even more endearing. Bing Lee and Charlotte Lu (a terrific performance by Julia Cho that deserves a spin-off of its own) provide a welcome diverse twist on Austen's originals – although it's hard to believe that nice-but-dim Bing Lee is supposed to be a doctor in this version.

But it's Mary Kate Wiles who steals the show as Lydia, whose hyperactive party girl persona masks a growing sense of loneliness. Her gradual disintegration has been happening so subtly over the course of the series that, to borrow a phrase from Austen, we were in the middle of it before we knew it had begun.

Freed from the usual trappings of costume and Regency etiquette, Green and Su are not afraid of exploring the darker side of Pride and Prejudice. When Lizzie is offered the chance to step straight into her dream job at Collins and Collins and turns it down in favour of finishing her masters degree, the secure financial future she is turning down is real and immediate – as was the original Lizzie's refusal to marry Mr Collins when Austen's novel was originally published. Mrs Bennet is eager to get her daughters out of the house because, with the bank turning down yet another loan application, there might not be a nest from which her daughters can fly for much longer. And Wickham is more than just a charming cad – his hold over the increasingly vulnerable Lydia is tightening in the current episode arc, and the comments below the videos have moved from sighing over his abs to linking to Wikipedia articles about abusive relationships.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is faithful to the original without being slavish or full of in-jokes – although if that swimming pool on the roof of Pemberley Digital doesn't feature soon, a lot of viewers are going to be very disappointed. It's a sharp, clever re-imagining of a novel about class, society and the things we do for love (and money). I like to think that if Austen was writing now, she might have created something very like this.

The best of the rest

Pride and Prejudice (1995)

There's more to Andrew Davies' definitive adaptation than wet shirts. Jennifer Ehle is a warm and witty Lizzie and Colin Firth's stilted smouldering is an exercise in sexual and emotional repression, but it's the supporting cast that makes this adaptation sing, with Alison Steadman's overbearing Mrs Bennet and Anna Chancellor's languidly bitchy Caroline Bingley stealing the show.

Emma (2009)

The eponymous Ms Woodhouse might be Austen's least likeable heroine – a meddling snob who translates awkwardly to screen. Romola Garai plays her as a brilliant, bored young woman whose only outlet for her intellectual abilities is playing matchmaker while vowing not to give up her own independence.

Persuasion (1995)

At the grand old age of 27, Anne Elliot is the oldest of the bunch, and this story of lost love and second chances doesn't get a better screen outing than Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds' understated performances.

Northanger Abbey (2007)

Austen's delightful gothic pastiche doesn't get the screen time it deserves, but Felicity Jones's effervescent performance as proto-Twihard Catherine Morland shouldn't be overlooked.

Lost in Austen (2008)

A modern woman who thinks Darcy is her ideal man stumbling into the world of her favourite novel is something of an overdone trope, but Jemima Rooper's discovery that life in Regency England isn't all it's cracked up to be is an irreverent look at familiar characters through a different lens. Bonus points for Elliot Cowan giving Colin Firth a run for his money in the wet-shirt stakes, and Caroline Bingley's froideur towards other women masking her Sapphic leanings.