In case you feared running short of new Jane Austen-themed television, you can stop worrying: No fewer than three Austenian adaptations may be making their way to our TV screens—though how quickly remains to be seen.
First up is likely to be Miss Austen, the PBS adaptation of Gill Hornby’s 2020 novel about Cassandra, the elder Austen sister. The four-episode series started filming late last year and although no air date has been announced, it seems likely that PBS and the BBC will roll it out sometime in 2025, during the celebrations attending the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth.
So that’s old news. But earlier this month we learned of two brand new, never-before-mentioned Austen projects in the pipeline as well:
* The BBC is planning a ten-part series based on Janice Hadlow’s 2020 novel The Other Bennet Sister, a Pride and Prejudice sequel centered on Mary Bennet, the pedantic and unpretty middle daughter in Elizabeth Bennet’s family.
I haven’t read the book, but it got rapturous reviews, so I’m excited to see this series, even if ten (!) episodes does sound a tad excessive for any novel shorter than War and Peace. (In fact, the most recent adaptation of War and Peace only stretched to six episodes.) It’s hard to shake the suspicion that Hadlow’s path to a lavish, ultra-faithful BBC period adaptation might have been eased by the fact that she spent twenty-five years of her pre-novel-writing career as a programmer for . . . the BBC.
But never mind! Nepo baby though it may be, I will happily judge The Other Bennet Sister on its own merits. And if they get cracking on the shooting, maybe poor Mary can take her bow before the end of the Austen 250 year.
* Netflix, the people who brought us the most reviled recent adaptation of an Austen novel—the 2022 Dakota Johnson Persuasion (shudder)--are reportedly considering another Austen project: A new mini-series based on Pride and Prejudice.
The British writer Dolly Alderton, best known for her 2018 memoir Everything I Know About Love, is said to be adapting P&P, and the Daily Mail reported that the actor Daisy Edgar-Jones was offered the role of Elizabeth Bennet but turned it down. (The non-casting of Edgar-Jones licensed the Mail to run a red-carpet photo of her clad in a dress so revealing that Lady Catherine would undoubtedly have felt it polluted the shades of Pemberley beyond reclamation.)
This project seems to be in a still-embryonic stage—"There is no cast attached yet and the project has not been greenlit,” Variety reports—so it won't be coming soon and may well die on the vine. Would that be a good thing? I’m torn.
Far be it from me to refuse a new P&P: It’s been nearly thirty years since the last TV adaptation, the iconic Firth-Ehle miniseries, and nearly twenty since the last feature film, the love-it-or-hate-it version starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. So if every generation deserves its own crack at this beloved story, we’re overdue. And by choosing Alderton, a quintessential Hip Millennial Voice, Netflix seems to be signaling that this will be Not Your Mother's P&P.
But given the company’s track record with Austen, it’s hard not to worry. Just promise me no emotional-support rabbits this time around.
Comments