A fine year for Austen adaptations? Who knows...

I have to confess to feeling pretty tired today, too tired – as it turns out – for any analytical thinking. Even searching reviews of old children's classics are beyond me (I will get to the three best "shoe books" by Noel Streatfeild eventually). But when I have no energy to bellyache over future costume dramas, then all hope is truly lost, so I'll try that.

According to a video I caught on YouTube, 2026 will be a big year for Austen adaptations. The claim was made on the strength of two TV series and one film – one of the TV series is already airing (in Great Britain, if not here in Sweden) and the other two projects are in the pipeline. The simple question to answer, which even I should manage in my knackered state, is: do they look as if they'll be any good?

The Other Bennet Sister: Not really an Austen adaptation, but taking place in the Austen universe, as it were, as it's an adaptation of Janice Hadlow's novel with the same name. I really liked the novel  when I read it a couple of years ago; it made a good case for Mary Bennet without vilifying the other characters. The clips I've seen have looked promising, and the one review I've read so far was very positive indeed. 

There is a risk, of course, that the adaptation will overplay its hand when it comes to decrying the precarious position of Regency women. Not that it wasn't precarious, but I find I'm becoming more and more irritated with period dramas which tut-tut too loudly over the past (and I didn't have much patience with them to begin with). All the same, I'm cautiously looking forward to The Other Bennet Sister.

Pride and Prejudice on Netflix: Netflix doesn't have the best track record when it comes to Austen adaptations. This looks like a more serious attempt than the insane Persuasion from a few years back, though. Weighty actor names have been secured for it: I may be suffering slightly from Olivia Colman fatigue, but there's no denying she's a solid choice for Mrs Bennet, and I can't wait to see Rufus Sewell's Mr Bennet (is Mr Bennet really allowed to be more attractive than the story's love interests?) and Fiona Shaw's Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

What of the central couple, then? Here, I'm more wary. Emma Corrin was a great Princess Diana in The Crown, and made for an amusingly chaotic villain in Deadpool and Wolverine. However, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Corrin got the part of Elizabeth Bennet before announcing themselves to be non-binary. Lizzy Bennet is all woman, and casting an actor in the role who doesn't commit to womanhood is something of an insult to us gals. Corrin could still be good, though.

If you think that's a shallow argument for doubting someone's suitability for a part, then how about this? Jack Lowden, judging from the pictures I've managed to unearth on IMDB, looks nothing like I imagine Mr Darcy. Still, for all I know, he could be a brilliant actor who will carry it off. Also, a spot of hair dye did wonders for Colin Firth, so maybe they'll use the same treatment here? I'm all for ginger men as a rule, but Mr Darcy is... not ginger.

This adaptation of Pride and Prejudice will be worth a watch, even if, as I think we can assume, it won't be able to hold a candle to the BBC version. But as it's a straightforward adaptation of Austen's most beloved book (though I'm more fond of Emma myself), the risk that it'll crash and burn is much higher  than with The Other Bennet Sister.

Sense and Sensibility: Before the aforementioned YouTube video, I had no idea this film was coming out this year, or even existed. For me it's an unknown quantity, which in itself is pretty exciting. The only name I recognised from the cast list was Fiona Shaw, again, in the very different from Lady Catherine role of Mrs Jennings. The casting director hasn't been too lazy but has gone for more unknown names (either that or I'm just hopelessly out of touch), and I respect that.

Now, if there's one thing that's harder to pull off than making a TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that can be mentioned on the same day as the Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth one, it's making a new Sense and Sensibility film when the perfection of the 1995 film exists. All the same, it should be possible to put a slightly different spin on the source material. Sense and Sensibility isn't such a polished product of a novel as Pride and Prejudice, but that can give an adapter a little more leeway.

Not much is known, and much can go wrong, but I'll watch this – as well as the other adaptations, naturally. Be prepared for much bellyaching if they prove to be horrible.

Miss Austen should be right up my alley, and yet...

Was autumn always this intense? I have trouble even making it to the gym a modest number of times a month, let alone finding the energy for blogging. But I guess I should be able to write about how there's no pleasing some people, in this case me.

A few weeks ago, I watched Miss Austen, a respectable period drama based on a novel by Gill Hornby. It's well-cast, well-acted, and has the admirable goal of defending Jane Austen's beloved sister Cassandra. She's not much liked by literary historians as she burned most of her sister's letters. However, this drama fights Cassandra's corner. An enduring love for Jane and an eagerness to follow her wishes are shown to be the reasons for the letter-burning, rather than an attempt to sanitise Austen's reputation. I think Austen would have warmly approved.

All the same, isn't it kinda boring?

That's certainly not the actors' fault. Both Keeley Hawes (always a safe bet) and Synnøve Karlsen put in engaging performances as the older and younger Cassandra; Patsy Ferran is a perfect Jane; and Jessica Hynes as my personal favourite, passive-aggressive sister-in-law Mary Austen, is a joy. We follow two timelines. The older Cassandra travels to the deathbed of the brother of the man she was supposed to marry, and takes an interest in his daughter Isabella. Isabella's deceased mother was a firm friend of Jane's, and Cassandra finds her sister's letters in an attempt to keep them from her sister-in-law's clutches. While she reads them, memories resurface. That's where the younger Cassandra and Jane – long-dead in the more recent timeline – come in.

The problem is, not much happens in either timeline. Either Hornby or the TV adapters have attempted to jolly things up a bit with a romance or two, but for once I could have done with less of this particular ingredient. Isabella's interest in the local doctor, who reciprocates her feelings but is too proud to ask again after having been shown the door once (by Isabella's dad), is a tepid affair. The young Cassandra meets an absurdly eligible admirer (wholly fictional, I suspect) while on a family holiday, but as we know that both she and Jane ended up single, it's just irritating to watch her push away her chance at love for no apparent reason. The plot drags quite a bit.

What should bring some zip into the proceedings is Jane's writing, but the flashbacks take place very early in her writing career, so there's not much discussion about her published novels. The exception is Persuasion, which the older Cassandra is reading to Isabella. I loved the flashback, taking place later than the other ones, where we see young(ish) Cassy reading the scene of Louisa's accident for the first time and exclaiming "you killed her!", much to Jane's amusement (Louisa lives). In the later timeline, Isabella is equally on the edge of her seat when the scene is read to her by Cassandra. 

This was great, and I could have done with more in the same vein. That Isabella's impertinent maid Dinah eavesdrops and gets ideas on how to bring her mistress and the doctor together was perhaps a melodramatic twist, but hey, I'm not complaining. We needed a reminder, at this point, as to why we should take any interest in these women at all.

The continuing problem with life and works dramas is that novelists' lives – even the most colourful ones – are rarely as interesting as their books. That doesn't mean they themselves were unhappy. The best thing about Miss Austen (besides Mary) is the sisterly bond between Jane and Cassandra, and I can well believe that they lived very contentedly, as long as they could be together. Whether their life really lends itself to the costume-drama treatment, however, is another matter.

Sanditon series two: A Regency romp that works

The frothy costume drama Sanditon continues after all! It was originally cancelled by ITV after its first series – in spite of, to my knowledge, being generally well received by the costume-drama-loving public – but (if a brief Wiki search is to be believed) PBS and the streaming service BritBox came to the rescue. Series two was aired by Swedish television during the autumn of this year and became a welcome distraction on Saturday evenings. Irritatingly, the series creators (chief among them Andrew Davies), not having learned their lesson from last time, decided to end this series on a cliffhanger as well. At least this time we are assured that the story will go on in a third series.

Why do I like this show, when I was so stern about Netflix's attempt to jazz up Austen's Persuasion and haven't been especially blown away by Bridgerton, which is firmly in the same genre? It's not as if Sanditon has anything to do with its supposed source material anymore. Any tenuous link to the fragment penned by Jane Austen has been snapped long ago. And it's not Great Art by any means. The characters, though engaging enough and well acted, aren't especially complex, and the storylines aren't original – in fact they are cheerfully stolen from such different sources as Cyrano de Bergerac, governess novels and Gaslight. In my post about the first series, I warned against expecting anything Austenesque, and I repeat the warning for this series as well. This is not like Davies's Pride and Prejudice, let alone his Dickens adaptations. But, like the recent Doctor Who special, what we have here is an example of TV entertainment that understands its brief. It promises a light-hearted Regency soap, with romances and intrigues you can gossip and speculate about with other costume-drama nuts, and this is exactly what it delivers.

So why don't I feel like Jane Austen's good name has been violated, in the same way I did when watching Netflix's Persuasion? It is a bit cheeky to use an Austen fragment as merely a sales pitch for a series and then go completely in your own direction. I'm not fussed about this, though, and I suspect the main reason is that I didn't think Austen's novel fragment was particularly good, at least not by usual Austen standards. And it is only a few chapters long after all. Persuasion, on the other hand, is a completed work, and one of Austen's best novels, if not the best. Anne Elliot is a wonderful, mature heroine, and I feel it's far worse to take liberties with her than with the relatively thinly sketched characters in Sanditon. It's also worth mentioning that though Sanditon is unpretentious and doesn't feel overburdened by background research (a character struggles with a corset at one point, but corsets weren't really a thing when you wore forgiving high-waisted Empire dresses), it's not knowingly, wilfully anachronistic in the same way as the Netflix Persuasion. It does make some attempts to anchor its plot in a recognisable Regency setting.

As for enjoying Sanditon more than Bridgerton, I simply think there is more pace to the former. It's strange considering that the Julia Quinn novels I've read are usually very entertaining, but I find Bridgerton more than a little slow. The material feels as if it's been stretched too thin, and there's not a lot of the original author's wit in the screenplay. Sanditon, by contrast, bounces along and has a wider variety of subplots to keep it going.

What's series two about, then? Well, for one thing, they've killed off poor Sidney, presumably because they couldn't get Theo James back. I thought this too drastic at first, but as there are other characters who are unaccountably absent, I suppose because their actors couldn't or didn't want to return, I could eventually see why they went with this solution (is it likely that Lord Babington wouldn't check on his wife at least once? And do we ever get explained what happened to Diana Parker?). Anyway, poor Charlotte is grieving for Sidney, but eventually other romantic options come along. A dashing Colonel (Tom Weston-Jones, aka hot Compeyson from Dickensian) takes an interest, while Charlotte for her part is intrigued by the reclusive Mr Colbourne, by whom she is employed as a governess for his daughter and niece. There is some mystery concerning his dead wife... Meanwhile, Charlotte's romantic sister gets entangled with various redcoats; prickly heiress Georgiana Lambe is courted by the painter Lockhart, who plays on his unconvential image but doesn't seem entirely trustworthy; Esther Babington, upset that she's been unable to conceive a child, becomes the victim of a plot to to replace her as Lady Denhams's heir; and Thomas Parker frets over Sanditon's finances as usual, this time more and more ably assisted in his endeavours by his younger brother Arthur.

Needless to say, I liked some plot and character developments more than others. If there's one character who has suffered from being so far removed from the original source material, it's Thomas Parker: in Austen's fragment, he is my favourite by far, but in the series not even Kris Marshall's homespun charm can save him from coming across as a prize idiot. I wasn't a fan of the sugar boycott subplot – "moral" boycotts are a pet peeve of mine in any era. On the other hand, I am warming to its instigator Georgiana Lambe (Crystal Clarke): there's some good character development for her and for Arthur Parker (no longer simply "the fat brother") in this series. Also, the boycott plot has the advantage of casting a favourable light on the comic relief characters of the vicar and his spinster sister; they support Georgiana and are genuinely fond of her. For someone who watches a lot of Midsomer Murders and the Morse crime dramas (Morse, Lewis and Endeavour), a kindly vicar in British television makes a nice change.

Rose Williams gives Charlotte a great deal of charm and somehow makes this often frustrating heroine work. How Charlotte can prefer Mr Colbourne to the handsome Colonel is a mystery to me, but I can't wait to find out how it all turns out in the end.

What was that? Netflix's Persuasion and the pretty frock conundrum

"What did I just watch?" Is a comment you sometimes hear on YouTube. I interpret it as slightly more positive than "It was terrible and I hated it". The reviewer is signalling that though the film or TV programme they watched was complete rubbish, somehow they managed to get some enjoyment out of the sheer weirdness of the product on offer. I consider myself generous when I call the so-called adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion on Netflix a "What did I just watch?" kind of TV film. It was awful in so many ways. I could not in good conscience recommend it to anyone. And yet I did enjoy revelling in its bizarreness, in a way I wasn't able to do in the case of, say, Enola Holmes. It's just... so... what were they thinking?

I'll start out boringly by, in all fairness, listing a few positives:

1) At the beginning of the film, when Anne is pining for Wentworth, Lady Russell points out that if he cared about her so much, he could have got in touch with Anne after he became rich. If I remember rightly, this is briefly touched upon in the novel, but I don't think any of the other adaptations have brought it up. I've never thought about it because come on, would you really contact a woman who dumped you because you were poor and say "Hello again, I'm rich now?". But Wentworth knew that Anne wasn't a gold digger, and that the concerns about his lack of fortune were those of her friends and family, not Anne's own. Not looking her up does seem a little "weak and resentful".

2) The Musgrove girls, Louisa in particular, are less slappable than in other adaptations. Louisa doesn't unconsciously treat Anne like an old maid and considers the possibility that Wentworth might be a good match for her. She registers that there's something between them and, when she starts falling for Wentworth herself, more or less asks Anne's permission to proceed. Also, when Wentworth criticises Anne behind her back, Louisa stands up for her. It's not in the book, but I quite like this.

3) When Anne tells Wentworth shortly after his return that "I don't want you to be angry", he whips back "How would you like me to be?". Good point.

4) Captain Harville is sweet. Well, he always is, but I'm grateful this adaptation didn't ruin him. In this version of the story, he actually tries to fix Anne up with Captain Benwick. When Benwick falls for Louisa instead, Harville explains being down in the mouth about it (in spite of his own attempt at matchmaking) by not expecting his own reaction: Benwick's grief "kept my sister alive somehow". I can buy that.

5) Mr Elliot is a real charmer. The whole Mrs Smith subplot isn't brought up (and let's face it, it doesn't really work in an adaptation anyway), so his main fault is being mercenary, something he is upfront about. I enjoyed him running rings around the sadly wooden Wentworth when it came to verbal sparring. It also made a nice change that this version of the character actually marries Mrs Clay.

6) On the whole, the side characters are played well. Richard E. Grant plays Sir Walter with a touch of self-irony which is amusing.

There is no way, though, that these positives weigh up all the terrible stuff. There's the sheer cringiness of the winking allusions to modern mores  ("A Five in London is a Ten in Bath"; "Hide my ledgers! I don't want anyone to assume my identity"; "Don't respond to anything he says... like a ghost"). Anne Elliot – Austen's most mature heroine, who suffers real anguish during the course of the novel –  is depicted as a Bridget Jones-like singleton, smirkingly breaking the Fourth Wall, drinking red wine to drown her sorrows, sometimes mooning over Wentworth like a teenager and getting into embarrassing scrapes. Her (unshaven) Frederick does little except look troubled: the romance is far from compelling. Even if you ignore the references to modern dating, Louisa's courtship tips to Anne are inane, and why would Anne herself rudely blurt out during dinner that Charles Musgrove proposed to her first?

The worst thing about the film, though, is its open, knowing anachronisms. So why on earth didn't they set it in modern times and state that the story was inspired by Persuasion rather than an attempt at a direct adaptation? It would have solved many, if not all, of the film's problems. It could openly have poked fun at contemporary dating games etc. instead of making nonsensical allusions to them in what's supposed to be a historical setting. The diversity casting wouldn't have induced any head-scratching moments for the viewer, because uptown 21st century New York, for example, really is a melting pot, unlike Regency England.

The only answer I can think of is that the film's creators were beguiled by the trimmings of a romantic period drama – the pretty dresses, the coaches, the dancing – while not caring for the real historical context at all. And so, as they were going to ignore the times in which Jane Austen lived and worked anyway, they thought they might as well do it as openly and flauntingly as they could. The success of Bridgerton seems to have given people the idea that you can play fast and loose with Regency-set dramas as long as you deliver those pretty frocks. Well, I'm sorry, but this doesn't work with an Austen novel (it hardly works with Bridgerton in my personal opinion). Next time anyone wants to jazz up a Jane Austen plot, they would do well to go modern.

Vindicating the Bennet sisters

My summer holiday (unusually long by the standards of most countries except Sweden, yet it feels too short for me) is drawing to a close. I have done quite a bit of reading, though - not very ambitious reading, mind you, but reading nonetheless. Two of my not-too-demanding summer reads have been "Austenuations", i.e. novels somehow connected to Jane Austen's fictional universe (prequels, sequels, retellings from another point of view - that kind of thing). In both cases, the novel they lean against is the ever-popular Pride and Prejudice, and one of the authors' goals has clearly been to give a satisfying ending to one of the Bennet sisters still unmarried at the end of P & P: Mary and Kitty Bennet respectively.

Now, this is not a new exercise. I'd guess one of the reasons Pride and Prejudice attracts so many sequel writers is that there are still two Bennet girls to marry off. Austen couldn't resist playing this game herself, apparently: she's supposed to have told her family that Mary married her Uncle Phillips's clerk and Kitty married a clergyman. Sequel writers tend to take different views on whether this should be considered "canon". For myself, I don't think they need to follow Austen's pronouncements to the letter: I've no idea in which context they were said, but I can just see her putting a worried niece's mind at rest ("Auntie Jane, didn't Mary and Kitty marry?""Yes, yes, Mary married her uncle's clerk and Kitty got really sensible with time and married a clergyman."). It is strange to imagine Kitty as a clergyman's wife - why couldn't she marry an officer, but a nicer one than Wickham? - and consequently, I've seen her paired with a couple of pretty unconvential clergymen in various sequels. Sometimes, I'd wish that the sequel writers would ignore Austen's marriage predictions rather than force them into being, but on the other hand I'd rather they follow them than write a sequel where Mary becomes an old maid or Kitty is killed off (this has happened). It's not too big a stretch to assume that Austen meant all the Bennet sisters to get husbands, and this is what most readers (including me) want too.

In the novels I've read - The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow and What Kitty Did Next by Carrie Kablean - the authors want to do more than simply marry the girls off, however. They want to vindicate and flesh out the characters of two sisters who, in different ways, were pretty hard done by in the original novel.

Hadlow's novel is the most ambitious, and maybe her task was also the hardest. I can't be the only one who's felt sorry for Mary Bennet, but sadly, the main characters' low opinion of her seems well-founded in Pride and Prejudice. As the plain and bookish sister, one could assume that she would be the clever one in the family, but she never says or does anything sensible and is in her priggish way almost as silly as her younger sisters. Austen was harsh here. You would expect an author to give a plain, studious girl good sense as a sort of compensation, but Austen would be familiar with enough luckless maidens who were neither good-looking nor clever and consequently really hard to marry off (this at a time when staying single and making your own living wasn't really an option for a middle-class woman, unless you could face the drudgery of becoming a governess). Mary is an example of this type of unfortunate girl. If we only go by what we learn from her in Pride and Prejudice, she's lucky to get a husband at all, even if he's "only" a lawyer's clerk.

Hadlow puts a lot of effort into vindicating Mary. The hefty novel takes place before, during and after the events of Pride and Prejudice. We learn of Mary's troubled childhood, despised as plain by her mother and ignored by her father, whom she is eager to impress. Hadlow skilfully doesn't deny that Mary's behaviour is priggish, but she makes a convincing case for why it's not unreasonable for her to behave in this way and gravitate towards ultra-serious books which denounce fripperies such as appearances. I did feel that too much time was spent on Mary's back story, but seeing Mr Collins's visit from Mary's viewpoint was fascinating. Many a reader have asked themselves why no attempt was made to match Mary to Mr Collins, seeing as they seem compatible. The answer is simple enough: Mr Collins, as Longbourn's heir, thinks he is entitled to the best the Bennet household has to offer him by way of wife material, and if Jane isn't available Elizabeth is the next-best thing. This, again, is realistic: what's remarkable is that Charlotte Lucas, no dazzling beauty, manages to catch him in the end. Mr Collins would probably not have much luck on a dating site in this day and age, but from the point of view of Regency England, he is highly eligible.

What I liked was that Hadlow's Mary isn't any more taken in by Mr Collins than the rest of the Bennet family: she sees his absurdities, but believes she would be able to live with them and makes an entirely unromantic play for him. It fails, and she is not given any credit for her pragmatic thinking by her mother.

Hadlow doesn't spend too much time on the events described in Pride and Prejudice, but only delves into them when they are important for Mary, which is a good call. I was more interested in what happens to her after P & P, and the slow build-up pays off when it comes to character development: I could believe that the self-aware and intelligent young woman at the end of the novel was the same person as the insecure teenager at the beginning of it who sought solace in Fordyce's sermons and thought she had to make an impression by quoting moral platitudes. There's a lot to enjoy for the Austen nerd: we get to see what it really means to be the unmarried sister in a family, and I appreciated how Mary unwittingly puts the Collinses' marriage on a better footing during a visit by forcing Charlotte to up her game. Avoiding your husband as much as possible really isn't much of a recipe for a happy marriage. When Mary's own chance for romance finally comes I found her love interest a little underwhelming, but I think Austen would have approved of him, for all that he's not Mr Phillips's clerk.

What Kitty Did Next isn't as substantial as The Other Bennet Sister - it's more of a classic Regency romp kind of Austen sequel. Like Hadlow, though, Kablean is a stern champion of "her" Bennet sister and keen to portray her as a young woman of character. Now, Kitty in the original novel is more of a blank slate than Mary. She copies her sister Lydia a lot, so what she becomes when she is free of Lydia's influence is really anyone's guess. In this respect, you could say that she's easier to vindicate than Mary. Like her sister, though, she is left in an unenviable position at the end of Pride and Prejudice. Mr Bennet, spooked by Lydia's fate, vows that he will become a much sterner parent and rattles off a number of restrictions which poor Kitty will bear the brunt of. He is mostly joking, but Kitty isn't to know that (I didn't get it myself as a teenager), and had he been serious, she would have had zero chance of meeting a suitor. Serious or not, Mr Bennet's new-found interest in his role as a father is likely to lead to a much duller life for Kitty.

In Kablean's novel, Kitty discovers talents both for writing and music, which I thought came a bit out of nowhere. But she is still suitably interested in the glamours of high society. The novel feels a little static at times: the blurb mentions a "fateful night" at Pemberley, but it doesn't take place until quite late, and before that there aren't that many events or conflicts. It has to be said, though, that I hadn't predicted the way in which Kitty gets into trouble: it's a little different to what one might think. Kablean is clearly familiar with Austen's marriage predicitions for Mary and Kitty, and mischievously introduces several young men who either are or might become ordained, which keeps one guessing, though Kitty's own preferences seem pretty marked. Or will her final choice not be a clergyman at all?

Of the two novels, I prefer Hadlow's, but I enjoyed Kablean's as well as an easy summer read. It's interesting to see that they have some things in common: for one thing, happily, they aren't written as Austen pastiches, and the prose flows well yet unanachronistically. In both novels, the sisters' parents are no help when it comes to the girls finding happiness (except in the end for Kitty when Mr Bennet steps up) and their father's contempt for their "silliness" wounds them both. Jane is kind but ineffectual when there's a real crisis brewing. Miss Bingley is a cow. The Gardiners offer a refuge and are very important in Hadlow's book especially. The Darcy household is somewhat criticised for being a self-contained unit: it's difficult to find a place in their happy bubble. Hadlow's Mary never quite fits in at Pemberley, whereas Kablean's Kitty thrives there at first, only to learn the hard way that her sister, her brother-in-law and her new friend Georgiana Darcy don't quite trust the "new" Kitty yet.

Another thing the novels have in common, then, is that the focus is not (as it so often is in P & P sequels) Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage, so they're not an excuse to dwell on love scenes between these fan favourites. Fine by me (I'm a little tired of this romance, I must confess), but might be useful to know: trust me, if you want Lizzy-Darcy smooching, there are plenty of alternatives. 

Why is it so hard to get Emma right?

There's really no excuse for not blogging in the circumstances, is there? On Monday, I'll hopefully be back at the office (that I would ever put "hopefully" in such a sentence), so I'd better get another blog post out there while I still have plenty of time.

The Swedish Film Institute has very sportingly released some films which were recently in cinemas online (though they're not exactly cheap), so I've been able to watch the latest adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma in the comfort of my home. And it was... fine. However, although it did some things better than the 1996 film with Gwyneth Paltrow, I don't think it adds an awful lot to the interpretation of my favourite Austen novel. The actors are good. I enjoyed Josh O'Connor's oily Mr Elton and Bill Nighy's Mr Woodhouse who, though thin enough to creditably think himself an invalid, clearly isn't. It's nice to see Rupert Graves, whose likeable Lestrade is a highlight of the Sherlock series, as an equally likeable Mr Weston, and Johnny Flynn, who was such a good Dobbin, does his best in the thankless role of Mr Knightley. Miranda Hart is an excellent, tender-hearted Miss Bates. But as for the angle from which the novel is approached, it's pretty much the same procedure as in every adaptation.

The film is beautiful to look at, but also stylised, and played as an elegant comedy which doesn't offer much insight into its characters, Emma least of all. From the very first scene, where she "picks" flowers for Miss Taylor at dusk - or rather, a servant picks the flowers she points out while another one holds up a lantern - it's clear that Emma will be portrayed as a spoilt brat. Within these parameters, Anya Taylor-Joy does a good job, and unlike most actresses who have played the role she is actually close to Emma's age. Nevertheless, we have seen this kind of Emma - a conceited little miss who gets her rightful come-uppance - many times before in Emma adaptations. We see little in this film of her more endearing qualities, such as her love for her father. Overall, we are given few "character moments" with Emma or with anyone else. There's a brief scene where Emma practises dancing with Harriet, which shows a glimpse of the real affection between the girls - the film would have benefited by having more moments like that. I also liked the scene where Mrs Goddard's school charges pass Mr Elton in the street, giggling excitedly. It shows some of the context for Elton's belief that he must be the object of any young lady's desire.

As always, the Box Hill incident feels overdone. Taylor-Joy delivers the insulting remark about Miss Bates perfectly - she blurts it out thoughtlessly and is instantly aware that she has said something she shouldn't - but the wording has been changed. Emma's line is less witty and more a case of unabashed rudeness, which makes one wonder why she would be tempted to say it in the first place. The hushed, shocked silence and clear disapproval of everyone present is not believable - the only ones likely to pick up on Emma's faux pas are Emma herself, Miss Bates and the always censorious Mr Knightley. I have to admit, though, that the post-Box Hill scene where Emma tries to make amends to Miss Bates is probably the best I've seen in any adaptation. Emma, here, is dumb-struck, merely handing over a basket of delicacies, but Miss Bates - who realises what she is trying to do - shows that she is forgiven by emphasising the words "but then you are always so very kind". It was the only time during the whole film that I felt truly moved, and shows up the dreadful handling of the Box Hill aftermath in the Paltrow film, where Miss Bates flees Emma's company, as if this good-natured woman were actually capable of holding a grudge.

Perhaps it's because I like the novel so much that I'm so hard to please when it comes to Emma adaptations. I found this one too superficial, but the TV adaptation with Romola Garai, which focused more on the drama and less on the comedy, too gloomy. Plus, I have been known to say that it's ridiculous to wish for a "dark" adaptation of an Austen novel, so what is it that I want?

What I would wish for is an adaptation which sympathises more with Emma. With time, I've come to appreciate the Davies adaptation of Emma more and more, though it's not such a classic as his Pride and Prejudice. The casting was good and the balance between comedy and drama was just about right. But even Davies admitted to hating the main character and playing up her fantasist tendencies in order to make her bearable. Her warmth and wit seem to have passed him by, and in the end Kate Beckinsale's Emma, though engaging, is very much in the spoiled-brat-vein. I despair of ever seeing an Emma adaptation by someone who loves the heroine as much as most of us - adapters included - love Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Emma's faults are as offensive to modern-day moralists as to Regency ones, perhaps even more so, as they often stem from her feelings of social superiority. I must resign myself to never seeing the bossy, warm-hearted, intelligent girl I like so much in the novel rendered on the small or big screen with complete justice. At least it's a comfort that Austen was fond of her too.

Freewheeling Sanditon

Yes, I know, now would be a good time to reflect on the themes of The Crown. But it's November, and it's been a long day. So instead, I will reach for low-hanging fruit - in fact the lowest-hanging fruit in all the land - and blog about the TV series Sanditon.

Though the first half-hour or so is based on the fragment of an unfinished Jane Austen novel, I hesitate to call it an adaptation. In fact, if you haven't watched the series and would like to try it, there is one thing you have to bear in mind at all times: don't expect anything even vaguely Austenesque. The characters Jane Austen sketched in her fragment are there, true, but they neither speak nor act like Austen characters - even the more off-colour ones - do. TV Sanditon is a romp. It features, among other things, a girl giving a rake a hand job in order to disarm his advances and the heroine surprising the hero emerging stark naked from a spot of sea-bathing (because these days, a wet shirt would be much too subtle). Sanditon may not be as racy as those regency romances with a half-clad beauty on the cover and titles like Seducing a Duke, but it has more in common with those kind of books than with anything by Austen.

But regency romps can be very entertaining, and I enjoyed this one. To own the truth, I had a much easier time getting through it than, say, The Crown (which I'm still not quite finished with). At least half of Sanditon is penned by costume-drama supremo Andrew Davies, but what's notable is that most of the better episodes were written by his co-authors. Davies is surprisingly coarse, especially in the earlier episodes (I know he has that reputation, but somewhat unfairly in my view - there is nothing coarse about, say, his adaptation of Bleak House). In time, the show finds its feet more, but even at its best it's more seaside postcard than delicate ivory miniature. And as long as that's what you're prepared for, it's fine.

As Davies and Co. don't even try to finish the story the way they think Austen would have done it, it leaves them free to do anything they like with the Sanditon characters. In fact, Sanditon in some ways demonstrates the advantages and disadvantages of not having a set story to follow. There's the thrill that comes from the fact that anything can happen - and pretty much anything does. The script-writers can spin out the story, come up with new ideas that can be incorporated along the way, sometimes perhaps even respond to viewer reactions (even Dickens wasn't above a bit of fan service). Since Downton and Mr Selfridge ended, I've missed this kind of freewheeling drama. Attempts have been made to follow the Downton template - as with The Halcyon or Indian Summers - but they haven't been that successful. It remains to be seen whether Beecham House will make the transition from one-series wonder (which wasn't as wonderful as all that) to long-running costume drama soap. Sanditon, too, has aspirations to soapdom.

And here's where we come to the disadvantages of the freely invented costume drama that hopes to go on and on. The writers are averse to giving us a proper ending. In the optimistic hope of bagging a second series of Sanditon, Davies and Co. gave us a cliffhanger at the end of series one. Instead of getting together, astute country girl Charlotte Heywood and her brooding love interest Sidney Parker went their separate ways, as he had to make a wealthy match in order to salvage his brother's finances. What's more, Charlotte's friend and Sidney's ward, the East Indian heiress Georgiana (!) Lambe, was also separated from her love, and the personable foreman Mr Springer, who aspired to better things (and was a far better match for Charlotte than Sidney in my book) chose to give up an apprenticeship as an architect in order to honour his dead father's wishes.

All these problems could be resolved somehow if there is a second series - but what if there isn't? As with Beecham House, series one of Sanditon doesn't quite manage to stand on its own two feet. I don't like cliffhangers at the best of times, but they are especially irritating when there is no guarantee whatsoever that there will ever be another series. The trick in these cases is to end on a note which will leave the viewers content if the worst comes to the worst, while keeping a couple of plot twists up your sleeve should the possibility of a sequel come along.

All in all, though, I'd be more likely to recommend Sanditon than Beecham House to costume-drama lovers. Yes, the hero Sidney, who is brusque and impolite to Charlotte for no reason for a good chunk of the story (in an effort to channel Mr Darcy, supposedly - but Darcy's rudeness had its explanations, and anyway he didn't win his girl until he learned to behave) is a bit annoying. And why doesn't he shave? He's played by Theo James, aka Mr Pamuk, who is undeniably handsome, but he doesn't look his best with stubble - no man does. Yes, there is some clumsy anti-slavery pontificating at times, but it's not as if this wasn't a legitimate concern of the day. With an East Indian heiress as part of the cast, the race/slavery theme fits better into the story than when it's, say, rammed into a Mansfield Park adaptation for no particularly good reason. Yes, the characters are by no means remarkably complex. All the same, there's a lot to enjoy.

My favourite plot concerned the potential heirs circling the rich and, erm, challenging Lady Denham (Anne Reid elevating what is mostly a caricature). Making Sir Edward Denham and his sister merely step-siblings, in order for them to be able to have a clandestine affair without committing "real" incest, seemed a daft idea to me at first. If they're step-siblings, how come they're both called Denham? Shouldn't Miss Denham be called Miss Poorasachurchmouse or something after her dead father? I have to admit, however, that this amendment of their relationship pays off in the long run, as we realise just how smitten the outwardly cool Esther Denham is with her caddish step-brother, and in how much danger she is of denying herself happiness for his sake. Then there's Clara Brereton, Lady Denham's poor relation and not at all the innocent ingénue she appears. Esther calls her "a rat who would bite off her own tail to survive", and that sums it up neatly, but then she has good reason to hang on to Lady Denham for dear life. The schemings of the Denhams and Clara and their interactions are fun to watch while having somes serious aspects, too. At the end, everything seems to be resolved, but who knows? I only wish the other plots of Sanditon could have ended in an equally satisfying way.

What is the point of Mrs Norris?

My Jane Austen Rereading Project is more or less at an end (though I may reread one of the better completions of  the novel fragment The Watsons) as I have now finished Mansfield Park. I've already written about Fanny Price, and I hold to my opinion that she is, all in all, a sweet girl who has been too harshly treated by many readers and critics. (However, her reaction to Henry Crawford's and Maria's affair does feel a bit overblown - yes, it's a serious transgression which manages to injure most of the protagonists in some way, but Fanny makes it sound as if they've slaughtered a village). But there are other aspects of Mansfield Park  worth getting into, as after having read and reread the novel they are still a bit of a puzzle to me. One of them is the role of Fanny's Aunt Norris.

Many will associate Mrs Norris with Harry Potter - it's the name of Hogwarts caretaker Filch's cat. I'm pretty sure that her name is inspired by Mansfield Park and is Rowling's way of signalling to her readers that this is an unpleasant animal. Judging from the films, though (I haven't read the Harry Potter books), there is one significant difference between the two Mrs Norrises, apart from one of them being a cat. Filch's Mrs Norris is beloved by her owner, while no-one loves Mrs Norris in Mansfield Park.

The unspeakableness of Mrs Norris is certainly universally acknowledged. She is stingy, officious, petty, stupid and consistently nasty to poor Fanny, whom she treats as a servant while not showing any gratitude for all the errands she makes the girl run for her. She is on the wrong side of any argument, and there is hardly one situation she can't manage to make worse. I can't be the only reader whose heart sinks a little every time Mrs Norris enters the fray. And here is perhaps her worst failing as a novel character: she is no fun to read about. As heroine antagonists go, she doesn't have the villainous glamour of a General Tilney or the entertainment value of a Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She is almost as much of a trial to the reader as to her niece. So why do we have to put up with her?

Something that struck me when rereading the novel is that Mrs Norris doesn't fill much of a plot function. Yes, it's her idea to bring Fanny to Mansfield to start with, but its owner Sir Thomas Bertram could easily have come up with that idea himself. Later, she is active in bringing about the disastrous match between Maria Bertram and the rich and thick Mr Rushworth, but Maria would have been perfectly capable of arranging the match herself. Once Mary and Henry Crawford enter the scene, it is they and the Bertram siblings who drive the plot forward, not Mrs Norris. She is just a hanger-on who can be relied on to do the wrong thing.

So why did Austen include her in the novel? The most important reason is probably to increase Fanny's misery. Fanny's story echoes the Cinderella story in many respects, and Mrs Norris is more reminiscent of the Wicked Stepmother than Lady Bertram, who may take advantage of Fanny but who is in her languid way quite fond of her niece. Then again, one thing to be said for Wicked Stepmothers is that they tend to add spice to a tale in a way Mrs Norris completely fails to do. As I've already mentioned, characters who plague the heroine needn't do the same to the reader. Mary Crawford is a case in point: as the paramour of Fanny's beloved Edmund, no-one makes Fanny more miserable than she does, but she is a delight to read about.

Another possible explanation for Mrs Norris's existence is that Austen may have relished creating a character whom not even the most perverse reader could like. As the Sanditon fragment shows, she was aware that there are readers who will stubbornly root for characters which the author has set up to be warning examples. As a villain-lover, I mostly fall into that category myself, though the rake villain type favoured by Austen isn't really my cup of tea. So if the intention was to force this kind of reader into line - congratulations, Austen, job done. Also, it's probably more enjoyable to write about a thoroughly despicable character than to read about one. Mansfield Park may partly be a tract against self-indulgence, but maybe Austen indulged herself a bit on the part of Mrs Norris.

The best case one can make for the importance of Mrs Norris, I think, is that she acts as a catalyst. Her treatment of Fanny rubs off on the other characters, who would perhaps have treated her with more kindness and respect had they not unconsciously taken their cue from Mrs Norris. The Bertram girls believe they're in the right to despise Fanny, because their aunt agrees with them that she is ignorant. Lady Bertram thinks nothing of employing Fanny to fetch and carry for her because she sees her sister doing the same thing, and at least she does it nicely. Not even Edmund really questions Fanny's inferior position in the family, which makes it easier for him to do her little favours for which she is then suitably grateful. As to Fanny, though I would have preferred Austen to make her suffer in a way less insufferable to the reader, I can't deny that Mrs Norris's behaviour towards her offers a better explanation as to why the girl is so shy and unsure of herself than merely the aloofness of Sir Thomas and the neglect of the rest of the family would have done. She would still have had a hard time at Mansfield Park, but maybe not sufficiently hard to make her what she is.

Mrs Norris is not a badly drawn character - in her awful way, she is believable - and it would probably have been difficult to remove her from the plot altogether, at least not without making the rest of the Bertram family a little worse. Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that we could have done with a great deal less of her.

The message of Northanger Abbey: is there one?

What to make of Northanger Abbey? I reread it this year as I planned to do as part of the Jane Austen Rereading Project and was pleasantly surprised, as it was more enjoyable than I remembered it. I've said before that it's my least favourite Austen novel, but I'm not so sure now: with its wealth of dialogue, it's a livelier read than the exposition-heavy Sense and Sensibility. It's also less of a critique/parody of the Gothic genre than I expected - the main plot is a straightforward Austenesque one hinging on how the heroine manages to bag her man. But this is what's so puzzling about it. Since most of the story is in no way dependent on the whole Gothic novel context, why bother with it in the first place?

The two TV adaptations of Northanger I've seen have both played up the protagonist Catherine Moreland's propensity for daydreaming. Her dreams and fantasies, where the people she meets in real life are cast in various Gothic-novel parts, are contrasted with her more humdrum reality. In fact, the novel's Catherine isn't as big a fantasist as all that. It's only for a comparatively short section of the book, when she is staying at Northanger Abbey itself, that she believes herself caught up in a Gothic mystery. During all the time she stays in Bath with her friends the Allens she has no exalted expectations of great adventures. Moreover, aside from making a friend of the mercenary flirt Isabella Thorpe - an error of judgement which is totally understandable in a seventeen-year-old, especially as the Thorpes are for a time the only acquaintances the Allens have in town - Catherine behaves pretty sensibly in Bath. She quickly realises that Isabella's brother John, in spite of being the friend of her own brother James, is someone whose company is to be avoided as much as possible. In spite of the Thorpeses' best efforts, she manages to make the better acquaintance of Henry Tilney (her love interest) and his sister Eleanor (too sensible to be much fun at this stage). She quickly notices something is off when Isabella, by this time betrothed to James, starts flirting with Henry Tilney's brother. When she voices her concerns to Henry, he waves them away, but in time Catherine is proven to be right: Isabella's association with Captain Tilney does lead to (an implied) scandal.

In fact, when Austen contrasts Gothic novel clichés with Catherine's reality in the first half of the novel, it's not the heroine's expectations she's puncturing but the reader's. This soon gets a little wearisome, especially if you didn't expect a Gothic yarn to begin with or in fact don't have much conception of what a Gothic yarn is like. It's a problem for me - and I suspect many a modern reader -that I have very little knowledge of the kind of book Austen's supposedly parodying. The more she concentrates on what does happen in Catherine's life, without pointing out how different this is from what would have happened in a Gothic novel, the better Northanger Abbey works for me.

So what does Austen want to say when she's sending up the Gothic novel? That you shouldn't confuse fiction with reality? It always makes me impatient when a novel preaches the importance of keeping fiction and reality apart, because the novel's reality is, of course, also a fiction. The unrelenting misery of the ending of Flaubert's Madame Bovary is as much of a construct as a happily-ever-after would have been, and some of the characters - ruthless merchant, womanising local squire - are types you'd be much more likely to come across within the pages of a novel than in a real small town in 19th century France. What's more, there's something disloyal about a novel that aims to show the dangerous influence of novels on impressionable minds. Jane Austen herself claims, in a defence of the novel which can be found in Northanger Abbey: "I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding". Is she as good as her word, though?

If there's a moral lesson to be learned in Catherine's mistakes, it is a pretty confused one, for in a way, she is vindicated. Her greatest fault is believing that Henry's father, General Tilney, did away with his wife or has her secretly locked up. This isn't true, and Catherine is suitably mortified when Henry guesses what she has been thinking. But the General is still the villain of the piece - he is a domestic tyrant, he throws Catherine out of his house when he discovers that she isn't the heiress he thought she was, and there's much to indicate that he was as impatient with his deceased wife as he is with his children. He expects his offspring to marry into money, more or less pimps Henry to Catherine as long as he thinks she's an heiress, and probably married money himself. Catherine leaping to the conclusion that the General is a murderer on scant evidence is very silly, but not as silly as if the General, in spite his formidable manners, had turned out to be a good egg after all.

The Introduction of the Oxford World's Classics edition of Northanger Abbey argues that the novel is in fact a subtle defence of the Gothic novel, and that Catherine's adventures do in fact have a flavour of the Gothic. The General's character is a case in point. As for the "rational" Henry Tilney, he is a mansplaining idiot (this is more elegantly expressed, of course). It's easy to agree with the opinion that Henry's protests against Catherine's imaginings sound hollow. His argument is that such things would never happen in England, with its admirable laws and institutions etc. This means that he's not really defending the General at all - he's saying that his country, not his father, is too civilised for anything too Gothic to take place. Which apart from being insulting to the General is a pretty dumb argument in itself as the most spectacular crimes can happen in the most well-ordered of societies.

However, I'm not sure I completely buy the argument that Austen is defending the Gothic novel as an art form that may contain a kernel of truth in spite of its sensationalism. It is she, not the reader, who has been scathing about Gothic clichés in the first place - what's the point of knocking down the pieces she herself has set up? The surface contradictions of Northanger Abbey may contain a message of some kind - say, that the relationship between reality and fiction is too complicated to be summed up in "novels are a trusty guide to explaining real life" or "novels are nothing like real life". But there is another possibility. Austen was a master craftswoman, but this is after all the first full-length novel she wrote. She may have started it intending it to be a parody of a Gothic novel, then not found the exercise interesting enough. While writing, she then gravitated more and more towards the kind of psychological realism - with a good deal of romance thrown in - that would become her trademark. Even the brightest authors don't always have a master plan - sometimes they just make things up as they go along. Northanger Abbey may not be trying to tell us anything in particular about "good" novels, "bad" novels and ordinary life after all.

Things to look forward to in 2019

It’s time either for a retrospect of or speculations and thoughts about the years to come. Last year at around this time, I promised myself to get more into book reading again. The resolution was, overall, a success, although my Jane Austen Rereading Project stalled when only Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey (my least favourite Austen novel) remained. It’s not that long ago I read Mansfield Park… Anyway, I will get around to them next year. I did try out some fantasy as well and enjoyed Caraval and Legendary hugely, so I will keep experimenting cautiously.

Maybe 2019 will be the year I rediscover my love of costume dramas? What with Once Upon A Time ending and no more Rumple (sob) to gladden my heart, I will need something to console me. Luckily, the year ahead looks like it’s going to be the year when Julian Fellowes delivers on two counts. Here, then, are some of the possible cultural-consumption highlights (from my perspective) of 2019:

Downton Abbey the film/movie: They’re finally doing it! Better late than never, I suppose, though having moved on on the villain-loving front, I’m not as mad with anticipation as I would once have been. The lateness of the project does worry me, as I’m afraid the Downton audience has had too much time to get over their obsession/healthy interest in the Crawley family saga. On the other hand, internet reactions seem enthusiastic enough, and perhaps many other Downton fans are, like me, using the time before September to rewatch the entire series, the better to be able to speculate on what plot lines may be picked up again and finally reach a conclusion. I mean, though they kept us waiting for the film, it’s not as if we’re going to refrain from watching it, are we? Watch this space for the usual hit-and-miss predictions…

The Gilded Age: For supposedly being a project close to Fellowes’s heart, he has taken his own sweet time about this TV series, which will air on American telly this year and is set in the USA in the late 19^th century. The heroine of the drama is described  as a “wide-eyed scion of a conservative family” who will infiltrate a family of noveaux riches (or more correctly, even more nouveaux riches) which includes a “ruthless railway tycoon” and his “rakish and available son”. The son will probably be a zero, but I have some hopes of the tycoon. I wonder who will play him?

Les Misérables: In his usual undiplomatic way, Andrew Davies has been scathing about the musical based on Victor Hugo’s classic, which happens to be my favourite musical and what got me interested in the novel in the first place. Nevertheless, Davies will be Davies, and I will not let his bad boy antics cloud my judgement of his own Les Mis project based squarely on the book. Davies is just the guy to trim off all Hugo’s endless diversions and get to the story, and the first trailer seems promising. I’m glad we get to see Fantine’s back story this time around. Also, I’m certain Olivia Colman will be a great Madame Thénardier. Which leads me almost seamlessly to:

The Crown season three: I’ve not been as devoted a fan of this show as many other period drama lovers, but I will admit that it’s an ambitious, high-quality series with superb acting. It certainly knocks spots off, say, Poldark or Victoria. The bad news is that Claire Foy, who was such a spectacular Queen in the first two seasons, won’t be around in this one. The good news is that her replacement is the above-mentioned Olivia Colman, who’s been reliably excellent in every part I’ve seen her in (even as the crusading agent in The Night Manager, who should have been unbearable but somehow wasn’t). Also appearing is Tobias Menzies – whom I rather like, maybe because he’s a little shifty-looking – as Prince Philip and Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret. This could be fun, in a high-brow kind of way.

Finally getting to see Doctor Who series 11: Right… Not sure I’ll be wild about this. Doctor Who doesn’t air in Sweden, so I have to wait for the DVDs. I did see one episode of the newest series of Doctor Who in Australia – “Arachnids in the UK” – and hated it. Judging from reviews, though, this was the absolute low point of  the series, and one thing I did not hate was Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor; she put in a likeable performance in the Matt Smith era-Doctor vein. I am looking forward to being able to form my own opinion of what’s happening in Wholand. If I don’t like it, at least I’ll have the satisfaction of being right to have doubts about Chris Chibnall.

Frozen 2, I guess? It’s another sequel instead of an original idea, but at least it’s animated and not a pointless live-action remake, and it is Disney. I will be hoping that there’ll be one or two references to the Frozen arc in Once Upon A Time for us fans to detect. (I didn’t much like the Frozen arc – not surprisingly considering how it ended – but Once is Once.) There won’t be, mind.

Heatwave reading: Sanditon

In some ways, selfishly, I miss the heatwave already. It provided such a perfect excuse for not doing anything too ambitious - like reading anything too heavy, let alone blog about it. Using the heatwave as a pretext, as well as the fact that a TV adaptation of Sanditon by Andrew Davies, no less, is in the pipeline, I cheated when it came to the next step in my Jane Austen Rereading Project. Instead of selecting one of her actual novels, I instead chose to reread her novel fragment called Sanditon, ably completed by "another lady" (publisher: Simon & Schuster New York).

Much as I remembered, I actually enjoyed the other lady's efforts more than Austen's. I recall forming a very dim view of Austen's fragment first time around, and while I was less critical this time, I still could not see any signs that Sanditon would have turned out a masterpiece if Austen had finished it. The plot hasn't really got going by the time her narrative ends roughly 70 pages in. Moreover, most of the characters that have been introduced aren't that interesting. Lady Denham, Sanditon's matriarch (though with no children of her own), seems the most promising from a drama point of view, as long as not too much time is spent exploring her stinginess, which is a tedious flaw for a character to have. Mr Parker, with whose family the heroine Charlotte is staying during her Sanditon holiday, is a perfect dear, but there is a limit to how much fun can be had with his overenthusiastic promoting of Sanditon as the new up-and-coming seaside resort. He is saddled with two sisters and a brother who are hypochondriacs - another character quirk it's less than thrilling to read about, though the friendly officiousness of one of the sisters is a trait more calculated to drive the plot forward. Mr Parker's remaining brother Sidney has only just arrived in town when Austen breaks off, and has Love Interest for Charlotte written all over him. We learn little more than that he likes to make fun of his family, which I suppose singles him out as the sensible one but is not very endearing in itself.

There was one character's main flaw that I found interesting: Lady Denham's poor relation Sir Edward is revealed to be much taken with the rakish characters he reads about in novels by authors such as Richardson, and he's dead set to emulate them. In other words, he's a villain-lover, wilfully ignoring novel writers' attempts to set up rakes as an example of how not to behave, and instead siding with the seducers. It's interesting to see an author aware of the fact that readers will sometimes not react to a novel's characters the way the writer intended. Austen is scornful of Sir Edward's "perversity of judgment" and puts it down to his not having "a very strong head", but at least she has taken note of the phenomenon. Though rakes aren't the kind of villains I have time for, my sympathies in the case are rather with Sir Edward. Nevertheless, as he is "downright silly", he doesn't make for much of a villain himself.

The other lady who completes the novel does her very best with the starting point she's given. She doesn't dwell too much on such things as the Parkers' hypochondria, and she puts a lot of effort into making Charlotte - who in Austen's fragment comes across as little more than an observer, and not a very charitable one at that - into a likeable heroine. Charlotte's pining for the lively Sidney raises the novel's stakes just as it threatens to become too much of one seaside excursion after another. Nevertheless, there were times when I still found the novel a little dull. Perfect reading for a heatwave, though.

Andrew Davies will probably be making his own completion of Austen's fragment for his TV adaptation. It will be fun to see what he comes up with, though I do wonder why a star-quality scriptwriter like himself would want to adapt something as slight as Sanditon. Then again, maybe I'm overly harsh. Perhaps there is something inherently unsatisfying about novel fragments, at least for me: I'm no big fan of Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood either. You sort of expect the novel a first-rate writer is working on when he or she dies to be among the best things that author has written, because you assume their skill to develop with every novel they write. But it doesn't always work that way: I can't be the only one to think Great Expectations is a far better novel than Our Mutual Friend. With my expectations of a half-finished masterpiece disappointed, I'm probably more critical of passages I find uninteresting or clumsy (Sapsea in Edwin Drood! Oh dear, oh dear) in a fragment than I would be had they been part of a finished product.

Also, it's understandable if Davies wants to try his hand at something more relaxing after War and Peace and Les Misérables, like a regency romp which can somehow be linked to Jane Austen. And it's not as if I'm not looking forward to watching it. 

Jane Austen - hard-headed or romantic?

As I anticipated, I really enjoyed rereading Jane Austen's Persuasion. Emma is still my favourite, but I believe Persuasion comes in second for me, trumping Pride and Prejudice. Maybe the first-rate film with Amanda Root's immensely likeable Anne Elliot plays its part - going by the novel versions alone, Lizzy Bennet is more engaging than Anne. But Anne's a sweet heroine all the same, and only one of many genuinely nice characters in the book. Her immediate family may be caricatured, but otherwise both the settings and supporting cast in Persuasion make it pleasant to spend time in the novel's world. The love interest, Wentworth, is perfectly OK - a great deal better than Knightley, at any rate. His sister and brother-in-law, the Crofts, are lovely, and Anne's in-laws the Musgroves - though no intellectuals - are good-humoured and decent. Wentworth's naval friends in Lyme are also a warm-hearted bunch and contribute to making the description of this coastal town so attractive. Though Anne spends so much of the novel suffering from the pains of (as she imagines) lost love, Persuasion is a surprisingly cosy read.

The available film and TV adaptations do a good job of capturing what goes on in the book, but there are one or two surprises. For one, I was impressed with those who have done the adapting, for there is less direct dialogue in the novel than one might expect, especially in the early parts. We get a clearer view of what's actually going on in Anne's mind than can be conveyed on the big or small screen, even by the best actress - there's quite a lot of introspection. I was also surprised by the fair portrait of Lady Russell, who is the one responsible for breaking up Anne's and Wentworth's first engagement. Anne's snobbish father and sister may not have be thrilled by the idea of her marrying a penniless naval officer with an uncertain future and no "breeding", but they never care enough about Anne to put up any strong opposition to the match: it is Lady Russell who does the persuading of the title. As a result, Anne's and Wentworth's happiness is delayed for more than eight years until they find their way back to each other. Nevertheless, Lady Russell is far from being an ogre: she is shown to be genuinely devoted to Anne and to have good judgement in other matters. When Anne takes up the acquaintance of an old friend in Bath who has fallen on hard times, Lady Russell warmly supports her. I liked her reaction to hearing from Anne that Wentworth is showing a interest in Louisa Musgrove: "internally her heart revelled in the angry pleasure, in pleased contempt, that the man who at twenty-three had seemed to understand somewhat of the value of an Anne Elliot, should, eight years afterwards, be charmed by a Louisa Musgrove". It shows that Lady Russell is well aware of Anne's worth. It's also very human, as much as to say: "Ha! See? I was right - he is no good".

A funny thing about Jane Austen is that there actually is quite a lot of romance in her novels. Many readers first discover them when they are in their teens or twenties and revel in the love stories and happy endings. Later, they will probably be told more than once by people in the know that Austen is a sharp, hard-headed observer of her times, with a keen satirical edge, and that gushing "Janeites" who stress the swoony costume-drama aspects of her plots do her no favours. That may be true enough as far as it goes, but there are quite a number of instances where Austen seems to advocate the romantic rather than the sensible option. In Persuasion she sees nothing odd in Anne holding a torch for an old love for eight long years. True, we know that her love was reciprocated, so it's not a question of entirely one-sided pining. Nevertheless, an unromantic observer would probably have thought that the best thing for Anne would be to snap out of it. Austen also shows sympathy for Anne's mindset, and that of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, when they reject highly eligible suitors because they can't imagine being with anyone except the man they truly love, even if it seems doubtful (especially in Fanny's case) that he feels the same way. Austen does poke some fun at Anne's thoughts along these lines - "Prettier musings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy, could never have passed along the streets of Bath" - but she still finds this view of love and marriage natural, even if a comfortable existence as a single woman was a rare thing in her day. Marrying was how you secured your livelihood, and waiting for "the one" a luxury most women could ill afford.

Jane Austen is a sharp observer, and the quality of her writing alone explains why her novels have survived when those of many of her contemporaries have not. Nevertheless, one reason she goes down so well with modern readers must surely be that she, in her own wry way, is all in favour of following one's heart.                     

Emma is still the best around

It is time to speak of Emma - not Swan this time, but Woodhouse. I recently finished rereading Jane Austen's Emma, and found to my satisfaction that it's still my favourite Jane Austen novel. We'll see if the rest of my Jane Austen Rereading Project changes that - I suspect that Persuasion will be a strong contender - but what I can say so far is that in my view, Emma actually beats Pride and Prejudice in terms of readability.

It's hard to explain why, though. The novel is by no means action-packed: there are long stretches where nothing much happens. The start is slower than Pride and Prejudice's, as more back-story is fitted in. But once the story got going, it held my interest, even though I knew exactly how the various intrigues were going to end. There are two main attractions with Emma as a novel: the joy of reading a great author at the very top of her game, and the heroine herself.

Austen's prose style is crips and crackling throughout, and her characterisation subtler than in both Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. Yes, there's still a certain amount of caricature, but the characters remain believable. You not only think it possible that you could encounter people like this in real life, it's not beyond the reaches of possibility that you could share their weaknesses yourself. I for my part could easily relate to Mrs Elton's shameless sense of entitlement, John Knightley's anti-social tendencies and Harriet Smith's habit of drifting from one intense crush to another, while completely discarding her yearnings for someone who was the star in her sky and the light of her life mere weeks before (that is, until she has reason to be reminded of him again). The characters interact credibly too. For instance, in one dialogue between Mr Weston and Mrs Elton, the former only wants to speak about his son while the latter only wants to speak about herself and her sister and brother-in-law at Maple Grove. How they still manage to hold a longish conversation, negotiating various social niceties more or less adroitly along the way, is fascinating in itself, although what they say isn't vitally important to the plot. This isn't to say that the novel isn't tightly plotted, though. One of the members of The Jane Austen Book Club claims that Austen "could plot like a son of a bitch", and Emma is the prime example of that. Hints about the characters' true feelings and relationships to each other - often misinterpreted by Emma - are skilfully woven into the dialogue, and the reader is given clues in the same way as in a whodunnit.

However, Emma never looks dense for not managing to pick up these clues, or not putting the right construction on them. Her mistakes are understandable ones. Austen famously said about Emma that she was a heroine "whom no-one but myself will like". This was an overstatement: there are quite a few of us who like Emma very well indeed. Not everyone sees the point of her, though. Emma has been unlucky when it comes to film and TV adaptations: they tend to take a critical view. Emma as played by Gwyneth Paltrow was elegant, but on the cold side. Kate Beckinsale was livelier, but hampered by the adapter Andew Davies's dislike of the character. Romola Garai in the latest BBC adaptation is a brilliant dramatic actress, and her despair in such scenes as the aftermath of the Box Hill excursion was spot on, but the lighter, comical register didn't come off equally well. Actually, from the Emmas I've seen, Doran Goodwin in the ancient TV adaptation from the Seventies came closest to conveying some of Emma's warmth and wit, though she was somewhat over-arch and (to be ungallant) plainly not twenty-one.

Most of the adaptations above tend to focus on the least enjoyable aspect of the novel: the notion that Emma needs to be humbled and seek self-improvement in order to deserve happiness. I never like a cautionary tale element in any story, and the misfortunes leading to Emma bitterly blaming herself - as well as being blamed by her friend and future husband Mr (George) Knightley, as likely as not - are a sore trial. I do sometimes wonder whether readers and adapters should really let Emma's self-reproaches (powerfully written as they are) and Mr Knightley's opinions of Emma's behaviour guide them to quite so such an extent as they are apt to do. Mr Knightley, though like Mr Darcy he shapes up towards the end of the book, is a most unsatisfactory love interest. At the beginning of the novel, he says to Emma's dear friend and former governess Mrs Weston that he would like to see Emma "in love, and in some doubt of a return; it would do her good". Does that sound even remotely like a man in love himself? Also, he likes to lecture her about the very things she feels most guilty about, such as not practising her music more and not becoming bosom friends with Jane Fairfax, whose qualities and accomplishments he is quick to praise to a perverse degree, which naturally does little to endear the girl to Emma. Mr Knightley's anger when he finds out that Emma has encouraged Harriet Smith to refuse the upright farmer Mr Martin's proposal is understandable: she does real mischief here, and could have cost two young, well-suited people their happiness. At other times, though, his lecturing is less self-interested. It's partly because he's jealous of Frank Churchill and resents Emma's flirtation with him that he comes down on her so severely at the end of the disastrous excursion to Box Hill.

The Box Hill incident - where Emma thoughtlessly insults the aimable chatterbox Miss Bates - is mostly made a meal of in adaptations. In fact, our perception of Emma's behaviour in this scene has a lot in common with our perception of Pip's behaviour towards Joe in Great Expectations. We mind it because the person behaving badly feels so wretched about it him/herself, because the person slighted is so thoroughly good-natured and because, in spite of their good nature, they do register and are hurt by the slight. When you look at what Emma and Pip actually do, though, it's not that horrible, and well within the scope of normal, selfish, somewhat gauche human behaviour. In Emma's case, I would say it's hardly unheard of to be tempted into a witticism at someone else's expense while imagining that they're unlikely to pick up on it anyway. Austen does a good job of making us care desperately that Emma should put things right with poor Miss Bates as soon as possible, but in terms of causing actual damage, her meddling in the Harriet-Martin affair is far worse. At any rate, there's no reason to tell her off at such length and with so much indignation as Mr Knightley does.           

At the same time, I suppose that Emma's flaws wouldn't seem so forgiveable if she were completely unaware of them herself. It's better that she should blame herself a little too much, and gain the reader's sympathy by doing so, than not blame herself at all when it is called for. We can trust Jane Austen to know what's best for her character. Mr Knightley, though - honestly.

Is Lizzy really prejudiced and Charlotte really wise?

I've now finished Pride and Prejudice, the second novel in my Jane Austen Rereading Project, and yes, I can see why it's a favourite with so many Austen fans. It feels like a much more assured work than Sense and Sensibility, and Elizabeth Bennet really is a charming heroine. One problem I had with the novel - and this is nothing that Austen could help - is that the plot is by now overfamiliar to me. If you have seen the BBC adaptation by Andrew Davies, then you already know pretty much everything that will happen plot-wise - there are no "deleted scenes", as it were. Davies even added some scenes in order to flesh out the depiction of domestic life at Longbourn. As Austen's novels are comparatively short (well, compared to the average Victorian novel at any rate) there isn't really much in the way of sub-plots to discover either.

Are there no surprises in store, then, for someone who clearly remembers the numerous TV and film adaptations but hasn't read the novel for quite some time (or for someone who hasn't read the novel at all)? Well, there were a few things that I'd forgotten since I last read it and that haven't been emphasised much by the various adaptations. My views on Mr Darcy remain pretty much the same as when I wrote about Darcymania, but two things did take me aback somewhat. Firstly, there is absolutely no indication for the first half of the book that Darcy is actually a good egg. On film and on TV, you tend to get the sense that Darcy is more gauche than proud, really, and his brusqueness a sign of insecurity. His initial rejection of Lizzy is the sign of a man "in denial", and their romance is foreshadowed with exchanged glances etc.: the "love story that starts with a fight" trope is set up clearly enough. This isn't really the case in the novel. I first read Pride and Prejudice in a Swedish translation when I was about twelve or thirteen, which incidentally was too young as I was rather bored by it, but I remember finding it a pleasant surprise that Darcy turned out to be Elizabeth's love interest. I don't know how I managed to be so completely ignorant as not to know about this famous pair, but it proved a boon to me that I didn't. Darcy proving himself in Elizabeth's eyes became a plot twist - the villain was suddenly the hero. It would interest me to know if the novel's first readers had the same experience. If for some reason you would stop reading Pride and Prejudice after 150 pages (not likely), you would come away from it convinced that Mr Darcy is nothing more than an arrogant, conceited and humourless young man, almost as unfit to be a husband to Lizzy Bennet as Mr Collins.

In fact, adaptations tend to play up the "prejudice" part of the novel's title and play down the "pride" part. Elizabeth is shown to be full of mortification over the vulgarity and inappropriate behaviour of her family, and it is implied that it was perfectly reasonable of Darcy not to want his friend Bingley mixed up with that kind of people. Furthermore you are more or less given to understand - in the Davies adaptation especially - that if Elizabeth hadn't been such a silly goose, she would have understood all along what a sterling chap Darcy is. In the novel, on the other hand, there's no way for Elizabeth to know anything of the sort. When she meets him at Pemberley and he is suddenly all politeness and charm to her and her uncle and aunt it is acknowledged that he's a changed man, who behaves completely differently than when he was at Netherfield. Elizabeth wasn't blinded by her partiality for Wickham and dislike for Darcy into not seeing his good qualities before - he just never displayed them before.

Secondly, I must admit to having wronged Darcy in one instance. I've claimed more than once that I didn't believe he ever truly apologised for separating Bingley from Jane, and that the scene where he asks his friend's forgiveness in the BBC adaptation is a pure fabrication on Davies's part. It turns out, however, that he does apologise for the Jane-Bingley affair, and for all his other failings, to Elizabeth in a most handsome manner towards the end of the novel. It's true we don't see him apologising to Bingley, but he tells Elizabeth of having confessed to his friend that he was in error, which made even the good-natured Bingley angry with him for about five minutes. The Darcy apology doesn't get much air-time when the novel is adapted, and I honestly wonder why. If it's anything that earns Mr Darcy his high standing as a romantic hero, then surely it's this - his ability to understand when he's been in the wrong, admit to it and change his behaviour accordingly.

Another thing I didn't remember from the novel is just how negatively Charlotte Lucas's decision to marry Mr Collins is depicted. From adaptations, you mostly get a sense of this being a sensible move on her behalf: she is not likely to get another offer, and Mr Collins's situation as a vicar under Lady Catherine De Bourgh's patronage provides solid material comfort. Moreover, he is the their to Longbourn. Later, when Elizabeth visits her friend, she finds that Charlotte has arranged things rather cosily for herself and seems contented.

However, her arrangements include seeing as little of her husband as possible. I used to believe that Charlotte thought rather better of Mr Collins than Elizabeth, and that this was one reason why she could face marrying him when Lizzy couldn't. From the book, though, we are left in little doubt that Charlotte has no high opinion of her intended. "Mr. Collins to be sure was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary." Not only does Charlotte not love him: she doesn't even esteem him or like him (those words that Marianne in Sense and Sensibility found so insipid). When Elizabeth leaves Charlotte at the end of her visit, "Her home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms". The "not yet" strikes a worrying note, and one wonders if such a marriage can prove happy to Charlotte - or, for that matter, to her husband - in the long run. For all her apparent sensibleness, I suspect that Austen is really too much of a romantic at heart to make a very convincing advocate for a marriage of convenience.

Elinor, Marianne and their beaux

I'm now one book down in my Jane Austen Rereading Project, having finished Sense and Sensibility. At the beginning, I must admit I didn't like it much, but it got more enjoyable as the story went on. The first 60 pages cover a lot of ground - in no time, Elinor meets Edward at Norland, the girls and their mother decamp to Barton Cottage, the family gets to know the Middletons and Colonel Brandon and Marianne is romanced by Willoughby - but the characters don't come properly to life until more dialogue is included. Elinor's and Marianne's stay in London may take more time than it needs to, as does the winding-up of the happy endings (so as to make them seem as realistic as possible, I suppose). However, as the characters have more to say for themselves and the author has more to say about them, it is on the whole time pleasantly spent.

So is Elinor a stick in the mud, and Marianne a complete flake, as one would have reason to fear from the setup of the book? Well, no, not entirely. At first, the novel does seem to be something of a "compare and contrast" exercise, but fortunately it's not quite as simple as that. I must admit that Elinor sometimes got on my nerves. It is very hard to imagine any nineteen-year-old in love behaving as she does and hiding her feelings as much as she can simply in order to spare her family worry. Also, there is a certain smugness about her - she's well aware that she's behaving more nobly than Marianne, and at one time even hopes that her greater fortitude will act as an inspiration to her sister. Add to this that I didn't always think her behaviour was as admirable as all that, and that the "sensibleness" of it carries its own risks. Granted that it's maybe not necessary to make such a meal out of one's broken heart as Marianne does in front of her concerned family, but to hide your heartbreak altogether means depriving your loved ones of any chance to comfort you. When Elinor takes such pains to hide her feelings for Edward from Marianne and her mother, can she really blame them when they end up with the impression that he's not that important to her after all? Elinor has better manners than Marianne - I feel a bit guilty now for stating that the novel's Marianne is "a great deal" more polite than the film's, because she can be very rude - but that doesn't necessarily mean that Elinor appreciates, say, the kindness of Mrs Jennings, more than Marianne does for the better part of the book; she's just better at hiding her sense of superiority. Both Dashwood girls think of themselves as a cut above the whole Middleton family. In one instance, Elinor's politeness (unsupported by any real warmth of feeling) is downright counterproductive: while Marianne distances herself from the Miss Steeles, Elinor suffers their company while despising them, which gives Lucy Steele the chance to make an unwilling confidante out of her.

At the end of the day, though, the sisters' real affection for each other makes them both likeable, and Elinor is not annoyingly sensible all of the time. She believes at one point on scant evidence that Edward is carrying a ring with a lock of her hair (which she never gave to him), and she does some endearing pining after him. For instance, she is pleased that she doesn't like Mr Palmer better than she does, even if he improves on acquaintance, because it enables her to compare him unfavourably with Edward.

The sisters' love interests are a little more problematic than the girls themselves. The providers of the happy endings long remain scantily characterised. We learn little more of Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon when they are first introduced than that they are "not handsome" and do not fulfil Marianne's romantic notions of how a man should be. It's small wonder that adapters have seen fit to ignore the "not handsome" tag for these suitors, especially in the cases of Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon in the film and Dan Stevens (albeit with an unbecoming haircut) as Edward in the BBC adaptation. Of Brandon, we learn that he has a grave disposition, and he seems particularly unsuited to the lively Marianne. Even as we learn more of him - and his tragic past does much to make him more interesting as a potential suitor - he still appears as a better match for Elinor than for Marianne. I'm with Mrs Jennings and the mercenary John Dashwood on this one: Elinor and the Colonel would have made a fine couple. As for Edward, yes, he does reveal himself to be gently and self-deprecatingly amusing on topics such as admiration of nature, but it's still not entirely easy to see why Elinor should be so very much in love with him.

And as for the supposedly seductive Willoughby - I had forgotten just how awful his attempt at self-justification is, and it's made even more so by Elinor showing so much sympathy with him. From beginning to end, he is full of self-pity, and his only self-reproaches are of the dramatic "oh, what a fool I was to let this lovely woman go" kind. He has little real regret - certainly not when it comes to seducing the 15-year-old Eliza and leaving her pregnant - and is keen to blame any cruel behaviour towards Marianne on his wife. That the sensible Elinor should be so taken in by what this whining puppy has to say for himself is more than a little strange, even if she gradually comes to realise just how selfish his behaviour is. I stand by what I've implied earlier: the film did Willoughby a favour by cutting this scene.

I can understand why there are those who are disappointed in Marianne's fate; it is a little unfair to have her marry Colonel Brandon at a time when she's not yet in love with him and only feels "strong esteem and lively friendship" towards him. But she does grow to love him, and one thing's for certain - she didn't miss out in not becoming Mrs Willoughby.   

The BBC Sense and Sensibility - a respectable achievement

As a way of bolstering my pleasure in reading, I've started a Jane Austen Rereading Project. It's been a while since I've read most of her books; I'm actually far more familiar with the TV and film adaptations. Rereading the novels will be a pleasure in itself and will give me some decent blog-post subjects, both on the novels directly and on how well adaptations work when compared directly to the novel (I'm more used to comparing them to each other).

Sense and Sensibility - the first of Austen's novels I've decided on rereading, as it's the one I feel least familiar with - is a case in point. I've watched the 2008 BBC adaptation of Sense and Sensibility penned by Andrew Davies more than once, and each time I've struggled to see the point of it. It's perfectly good in its way, but there's hardly a thing in it that the marvellous 1995 film with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet didn't do better. Also, the BBC version more or less courts comparison with the film by handling some things in exactly the same way. Notably, the characterisation of Margaret, Elinor's and Marianne's younger sister, is lifted directly from the film. In the book, she hardly has a character to speak of, but instead of coming up with a new way of filling the part with some purpose, Davies borrows the lovable moppet version of Margaret created by Thompson (who wrote the script for the film) wholesale. She even hides under a table in Norland Park's library, and Edward Ferrars endears himself to Elinor by being kind to her, as in the film. None of this is in the book.

If I compare the BBC version directly with the novel, however, it fares rather better. I'm halfway through the novel, and so far the adaptation has proven faithful as far as plot and character are concerned. The dialogue could be more elegant at times; on the other hand it is refreshing that Davies does not try a faux-Austenesque style (I remember one Persuasion adaptation where the characters kept saying "Indeed" when meaning "Yes", which is typical costume-drama speak). David Morrissey as Colonel Brandon, though cutting a perfectly respectable figure, may not be Alan Rickman - but then from what I've seen of the novel's Colonel Brandon so far, he's not exactly Alan Rickman either. Sir John Middleton and Mrs Jennings are more toned down than in the film, and though I really enjoyed watching Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs letting rip, there's an argument to be made for a less extreme interpretation of these characters - they may be vulgar, but they're not quite strangers to polite society. It was also a nice touch that the BBC versions clung to the fashions of their respective youth, looking more in style with the 18th century than with the Regency.

Of all the adaptations I've seen (besides the film and this one, there's a somewhat crusty one from the 1980s) this is the most favourable to Marianne. Charity Wakefield is charming and pretty in the right, bright-eyed way. She is a little more polite than Marianne in the novel, who in her turn is a great deal more polite than Kate Winslet's Marianne. In particular, though she has her private doubts concerning the depth of Elinor's feelings for Edward, Marianne in the novel is always respectful and affectionate towards her sister and shows a great deal of interest in the subject of her future happiness. In view of this, perhaps it is fair that we get an adaptation where Marianne is not seen as such a selfish brat as all that.

The casting is good on the whole - Hattie Morahan's "sensible voice" as Elinor reminded me a little too much of Emma Thompson's, but she is the right type for Elinor, and closer to the novel's version of the character seeing that Elinor is only nineteen at the start of Sense and Sensibility. Janet McTeer is great as the girls' mother - a little more down to earth than she appears in the book - and we see a welcome glimpse of Jean Marsh aka Rose in Upstairs Downstairs as Edward's dragon of a mother. The only real miscasting is Willoughby. Dominic Cooper is a good actor; I remember him valiantly making the most of things as the daughter's fiancé in Mamma Mia. However, ungallant as it may be to say it (if you can be ungallant about a man), he's not dashing enough for Willoughby. Willoughby is the only one of the girls' love interests that is described as handsome in the novel, so he must be good-looking in an obvious and generally acknowledged way, especially as he has very little else to recommend him. I may have scoffed at Marianne's cheap taste in the film in preferring Greg Wise's Willoughby to the delectable Rickman, but I could see how it happened - Wise has exactly the right kind of film-star looks for the part.

This adaptation included the scene where Willoughby shows up while Marianne is ill and tries to justify himself to Elinor. I was always glad that this scene was not in the film, as Willoughby does such a poor job of defending himself, but I saw another review of this TV series which pointed out that this is precisely the point of the scene - not to make us sympathise with Willoughby, but to make us even more certain that Marianne is well rid of him. Viewed in that light, it certainly works well. When it comes to secondary characters included here but not in the film, you can see why they weren't in the film as they serve little purpose for the plot. But the elder, beau-obsessed Miss Steele is amusing, and though Lady Middleton is a personality-free zone (as she is in the book, where she only serves as a vehicle for barbs against over-indulgent mothers) it makes sense that there should be a Lady Middleton, with children. If Sir John was a childless widower, it would be a little remarkable that he should be so merry, and that his match-making mother-in-law should make no attempt to set him up. He would in that case be in need of an heir.

I still don't view the BBC adaptation of Sense and Sensibility as entirely necessary, and if you only watch one screen version of the book, I would still recommend the film rather than the TV series. Even so, I think I can understand why Davies wanted to have a crack at it, and it is far from badly done.