Emma was a six-part TV serial adaptation of Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma by BBC Television that was broadcast in 1972.^[1][2] It was directed by John Glenister.^[3]

This dramatisation brings to life the wit and humour of Jane Austen's novel Emma, recreating the female character of whom she wrote "no one but myself could like."

Emma presides over the small provincial world of Highbury with enthusiasm, but she finds that it is all too easy to confuse good intentions with self-gratification. Often insensitive, well-meaning and incorrigible, having engineered the marriage of her governess, companion and friend Miss Taylor, she now turns her attention towards making a match for the local vicar Mr Elton and her new protégée Harriet Smith. Her one voice of reason and restraint is Mr Knightley, who has known her since she was a child and who watches her behaviour with wry amusement but sometimes with real anger. Alongside, the lives of other characters proceed in ways not always understood by Emma, and she has many lessons to learn before the end of the story.

• Doran Godwin – Emma Woodhouse
• John Carson – George Knightley
• Donald Eccles – Mr Woodhouse
• Constance Chapman – Miss Bates
• Robert East – Frank Churchill
• Ania Marson – Jane Fairfax
• Ellen Dryden – Mrs Weston
• Raymond Adamson – Mr. Weston
• Fiona Walker – Mrs Elton
• Timothy Peters – Mr Elton
• Debbie Bowen – Harriet Smith
• John Alkin – Robert Martin
• Mary Holder – Mrs Bates
• Vivienne Moore – Williams
• Amber Thomas – Patty
• Hilda Fenemore – Mrs Cole
• Norman Atkyns – Shop Assistant
• Meg Gleed – Isabella Knightley^[4]
• John Kelland – John Knightley^[5]
• Belinda Tighe, Yves Tighe, Arran Tighe, Emma Horton – The Knightley Children
• Mollie Sugden – Mrs Goddard
• Lala Lloyd – Mrs Ford
• Marian Tanner – Betty Bickerton
• Sam Williams – Gypsy Boy
• Tom McCall, David Butt, Christopher Green – Musicians