All Things Pride and Prejudice

In the classic text of Jane Austen George Wickham is first portrayed as a victim of Darcy's viciousness but then as the plot unfolds and new facts about him come to light in Darcy's letter to Elizabeth, Wickham is revealed as a lying bastard, womanizer and devil incarnate. Although the latter is perhaps too harsh a label, after all when offered a decent sum of money he does marry Lydia so who is this Mr. Wickham really and what do the other apocryphal texts and films in the Pride and Prejudice universe have to say about him?
Speaking of Pride and Prejudice based texts and films, there is one that deserves special notice in my opinion, in terms of how it handles George Wickham. It's a film, or rather a TV mini-series - Lost in Austen. Traditionally Wickham is cast as a standard black hat baddie, thus when Lost in Austen's main character, Amanda, finds herself in the world of Pride and Prejudice she is naturally, well, prejudiced against George Wickham, because she knows his dark little secret, or so she thinks. However, the authors of Lost in Austen once again successfully prove that there is much more to Pride and Prejudice than meets the eye. And it's a nice twist indeed, the George Wickham of Lost in Austen is as far from being an inglorious basterd as can be; to Amanda Price's astonishment it turns out that it was Darcy's sister that chased George Wickham and not vice versa and when push came to shove George, being the honorable man that he is, chose to keep his mouth shut about the whole affair, while Georgiana told Darcy all sorts of nasty things about him. So all of a sudden dear George Wickham goes from a baddie to a knight in white garments.
Thus almost two hundred years after its first publication Pride and Prejudice is still full of surprises, some of which are quite nice actually.