But such a backlash only highlights the importance of the statement that the likes of Rourke and Iannucci are making in casting BAME actors in period roles – in particular, it is great to see a canonical text like Copperfield being freshened up in such a way (by contrast, the latest all-white adaptations of Little Women and Emma have been criticised for maintaining the status quo). It was notable that while David Copperfield was mostly shut out of the Bafta nominations earlier this month, it did receive a nod in the new best casting category – a tribute to its progressiveness on that front.

We so often look to the past to better understand the modern day, so why can’t it look like the modern day too? “London then and London now was and is a global city,” Iannucci says. “We wanted to make a city that the audience would recognise and the characters would recognise.” What’s great though, above all, is that now audience members and fans of Dickens from diverse groups can see themselves onscreen in the characters they have grown to love.

That was certainly the motivation for director Emma Holly Jones when she cast Gemma Chan and Sope Dirisu as the romantic leads in her Austen-inspired 2019 short film Mr Malcolm’s List (written by Suzanne Allain), which is set to begin filming as a feature in the summer of 2020.

“Casting the film as diversely as possible not only expands its audience, it emphasises the universality of its love story beyond its Georgian England confines,” Jones says. “We have an opportunity to completely reimagine the British period drama in a mould hopefully others will follow. More importantly, it’s nice to think that we might make the day of many people who studied the literature, who imagined themselves to be Mr Darcy or Lizzy Bennet, but never saw themselves or their cultures reflected on screen.”

At a time when racial divides in the UK feel especially palpable, film and TV can not only help bridge those gaps but show that our nation’s multiculturalism is not a modern thing. Finally, the industry is demonstrating that period drama is a genre in which racial diversity can be both reflected and celebrated, rather than any group being excluded because of outdated and inaccurate perceptions of our collective history. Is it time to retire the all-white period drama, then?

Kaufmann doesn't believe in enforcing strictures on the creative industries but emphasises that “we need to get away from our obsession with Austen, Dickens and white period narratives to allow new talent to write fresh stories set in the past, putting these fascinating historical characters of colour centre stage”.

The Personal History of David Copperfield is released in the UK on 24 January and in the US on 8 May.

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