For all of the display screen diversifications of Jane Austen’s works — e.g. Pleasure and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility — and flicks and TV exhibits about her writing — e.g. The Jane Austen E-book Membership, Austenland — there are surprisingly few onscreen tales concerning the author herself. However we’ll get yet another on Sunday, Could 4, when the four-part sequence Miss Austen debuts on PBS’ Masterpiece at 9/8c.
Black Mirror’s Patsy Ferran performs Jane within the miniseries, however the central character is definitely Jane’s sister Cassandra, performed by Bodyguard’s Keeley Hawes (spouse of onetime Mr. Darcy participant Matthew Macfadyen), who “decides that may have penalties for hundreds of years to return” to protect Jane’s reminiscence, PBS says.