Beating Netflix’s (fully pointless) remake of “Delight and Prejudice,” the BBC’s spinoff “The Different Bennet Sister” and French rom-com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” to the proverbial punch, the 250th birthday celebrations of arguably Britain’s most cherished novelist begins with a four-part drama specializing in her elder sister.
For a lot of literary students, Cassandra Austen is a villainess of Miss Norris-esque proportions. In spite of everything, her deliberate burning of her sibling’s huge private correspondence — solely 160 of her roughly 3,000 letters are nonetheless intact — largely thwarted any try to additional perceive the famously elusive creator. Nonetheless, “Miss Austen,” itself based mostly on Gill Hornby’s same-named piece of historic fiction, does its finest to exonerate her repute as a cultural vandal.
The BBC unique definitely comes with a powerful interval drama pedigree. Director Aisling Walsh received a BAFTA for her post-war miniseries “Room on the Prime,” whereas main girl Keeley Hawes made her identify in Charles Dickens retelling “Our Mutual Pal” and the marginally extra sapphic 19th century story “Tipping the Velvet.” However though the present fairly fortunately leans into all of the acquainted tropes — there are nonetheless loads of bonnets and bodices, debonair suitors, and societal gatherings — it’s not afraid to elegantly stray from the well-trodden path, both.
Certainly, there’s an ethereal, dream-like high quality to how the narrative meanders moderately than motors, repeatedly flashing again from the “modern-day” setting of 1830 (13 years after Jane’s loss of life) to the sisters’ late teenage years. The intelligent method its literary idol’s works are referenced all through additionally offers essentially the most meta Austen-adjacent work since “Delight and Prejudice and Zombies”: see how matchmaking maid Dinah (Mirren Mack) is impressed to engineer a romantic encounter after listening to a studying of “Persuasion” or the controversy sparked about Jane’s true masterpiece.
And the central love story doesn’t contain a noble esquire with a penchant for plunging absolutely clothed into lakes, however as an alternative merely the 2 Austens, each of whom by no means bought the prospect to vary their title from Miss to Mrs. Because the older Cassandra opines, “There isn’t a higher consolation on this world than a sister.”
The latter’s redemption arc begins when, on studying household buddy Fulwar Fowle (Felix Scott) is on his deathbed, she makes the prolonged journey to supply her assist. Effectively, that and get better any doubtlessly incriminating letters despatched between his late spouse and her dearly departed sister. “I do know my demeanor could not recommend it, however I hope that I’m nonetheless able to untying a ribbon,” she bites on her arrival to the assistance, proving an acerbic method with phrases runs within the household.
Hawes — who by taking part in 70 aged simply 48 proves it’s not simply Hollywood liable to casting impossibly younger — brings simply the correct quantity of steely dedication to a personality toughened by the tragedies which have befallen her. Beneath the resilient exterior, although, there’s additionally a heat, as exemplified by how she cares for Fulwar’s daughter Isabella (Rose Leslie), a younger lady who loses her father and — due to the vicarage’s extremely unsympathetic successor — additionally her dwelling in fast succession.
Most impressively, Hawes achieves the tough feat of processing Jane’s musings — narrated from past the grave — and the private ache typically inflicted by them with out resorting to melodramatics. After all, such letters are fully imagined, the actual Cassandra’s arsonist tendencies making certain that we’ll by no means know their true contents. However they’re offered right here, like “Miss Austen” itself, as understated but impactful, a combination of other recollections and telling observations which though removed from the scandalous one could have anticipated, nonetheless depart its reader reeling.
Synnøve Karlsen, completely solid having performed Hawes’ daughter in “The Midwich Cuckoos,” additionally impresses because the youthful Cassandra, even making blatant foreshadowing as “All shall be properly, I do know it” and “I’ll by no means marry every other man than you” sound fully pure. It’s her heart-rending relationships with the Fowles’ ill-fated seafarer Tom (Calam Lynch) and the fully fictional thinker Henry Hobday (Max Irons) which basically permits “Miss Austen” to have its cake and eat it.
Elsewhere, Jessica Hynes threatens to steal the present because the older Mary, drawing upon her sitcom background (“The Royle Household,” “Spaced”) to serve up a string of acidic one-liners which offer some mild aid from all of the mourning and melancholia. “You appear fairly worn out from resting,” being essentially the most brilliantly chopping. In the meantime, Alfred Enoch joins the Austen canon of dashing gents as Mr. Lidderdale, the kind-hearted doctor who ensures there’s a minimum of one swoonworthy kiss.
Nonetheless, it’s Olivier Award winner Patsy Ferran who proves to be the MVP as essentially the most well-known Austen, channeling a degree of charisma, intelligence, and wit which suggests her firm was as fascinating as her writing. “Happiness in a married lady is irksome to witness, and but the only girl spreads common delight,” comes simply one in all many zingers delivered with a profitable zeal.
Ferran is simply as compelling when such vibrancy and vitality provides strategy to dejection and disharmony as her aspiring writing profession grinds to a halt and her well being begins to deteriorate. Screenwriter Andrea Gibb, one other key identify within the all-woman manufacturing, captures Jane’s voice so remarkably you would simply imagine “Miss Austen” had been penned by the actual factor.
The sisters’ unbreakable, and a few would say barely too codependent, bond by no means feels something lower than genuine, too, whether or not they’re giddily gossiping in mattress or chastising one another for his or her contrasting approaches to marriage, a topic society frequently forces them to handle.
“All the things one must learn about Jane Austen is to be discovered throughout the pages of her novels,” Cassandra claims as Mary reveals plans to publish her personal tell-all biography. The slowly unfolding but finally rewarding “Miss Austen” convincingly speculates this was removed from the case. It additionally argues simply as persuasively that removed from the twisted firestarter historical past depicts, her closest confidante did, in actual fact, have the makings of a heroine.
“Miss Austen” premieres Sunday, Might 4 at 9 p.m. ET on Masterpiece, with new episodes launched weekly.