Period literary adaptations have all got a little, well, sexy of late, haven’t they? Bridgerton is, of course, the pinnacle of this trend, an erotic female fantasy brought to life and clad in wigs and elaborate corsetry. Emerald Fennell’s controversial “Wuthering Heights” was essentially an aesthetically exquisite vehicle for Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie to rut against each other across a variety of al fresco locations. And then there’s the raunchy reboot of A Woman of Substance, described by reviewers as a Riders-style bonk-fest meets Succession.
Hurrah, then, for The Other Bennet Sister, the BBC’s latest Jane Austen spin-off, based on the novel by Janice Hadlow. It proves the perfect antidote to all that climbing-the-walls steaminess and uninhibited shagging.
The 10-part series stars Call the Midwife’s Ella Bruccoleri as Mary Bennet, the dowdy, bespectacled younger sister of Pride and Prejudice protagonist Elizabeth. While each of her four siblings is praised for possessing at least one superlative quality – Jane, her beauty; Elizabeth, her quick wit; Kitty, her amenability; and Lydia, her, ahem, vivacity – poor, beleaguered Mary is reminded on a daily basis of her inadequacies by the spiteful and melodramatic Mrs Bennet (perfectly portrayed by Gavin and Stacey’s Ruth Jones), and informed that no one will ever, under any circumstances, want to marry her.
“To be poor and handsome is misfortune enough,” as Mary tells us in the opening scene, “but to be penniless and plain is a hard fate indeed.”
The series starts with the plot we’re already familiar with from Pride and Prejudice: Mary’s two elder sisters both manage to transcend their less-than-ideal family circumstances and make excellent matches with extremely eligible gentlemen. Behind the scenes, we see Mary’s own futile attempts to make a play for the ridiculous Mr Collins (played with the requisite conceited buffoonery by Plebs’ Ryan Sampson) after being coached by family friend Charlotte Lucas (Anna Fenton-Garvey) – only for the latter to swoop in and secure a proposal herself. “You cannot seriously believe the life of an old maid is to be preferred,” she tells a wilting Mary, stressing that women of their class have only two options in this life: “marriage or misery”.
From here, we follow Mary as she tentatively takes her first steps out into the wider world, attempting to build a life for herself in London that’s distinct from the lives of her sisters, and escape the narrative foisted on her since childhood: that she is irredeemably and inherently unloveable.
Bruccoleri is pitch-perfect as Mary – charmingly awkward and uncomfortable in her own skin, lost and in search of who she really is beneath the stack of weighty books, sombre piano-playing and memorised facts. Though it is, in part, an ugly-duckling-to-swan trajectory, there is no clichéd “makeover” moment where – gasp! – we realise she was beautiful all along behind those glasses. (When allowed to select her own dress fabric for the first time, Mary endearingly picks colours that are brash verging on garish, like a child playing dress-up.)
Instead, it’s a gorgeously slow unfurling as our selfconscious protagonist, via many missteps and crises of confidence, finds her voice, aided and abetted by her endlessly kind and encouraging aunt and uncle (Indira Varma and Richard Coyle), alongside love interests Mr Hayward (Dónal Finn) and Mr Ryder (Laurie Davidson). It’s like watching your own little sister, plagued by a lifetime of low self-esteem, suddenly step into her power.
The feel of this series is familiar: we know these characters, or those like them; the dialogue is pleasingly faithful to Austen’s original language and tone. And yet the decision to chart Mary’s coming of age in a tale of underdog-turned-unlikely-heroine breathes new life into the buttoned-up world of Georgian England.
At this point, as a dyed-in-the-wool period drama stan, I’ve watched more Austen adaptations than I care to remember; it’s incredibly tough to inject freshness into stories so frequently retold. But The Other Bennet Sister provides the ideal hit, combining all the comfort-watching pleasure of a beloved classic with the anticipation of following a previously little-known character on a brand new journey of self-discovery.
Sex may well sell – but so does watching the forgotten middle child finally get her flowers.
