Persuasion has only been available on Netflix for a handful of hours, and so there’s no real way of knowing whether Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the star of Fleabag, has seen it yet. Hopefully it isn’t too late to stop her, because the sweeping wave of full-body horror that will overcome her within seconds of pressing play is bound to hurt.
Because, if it weren’t for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, this new version of Persuasion would have never been made. Of all the adaptations that Jane Austen’s novel has suffered, this is by far the most ostentatiously Fleabaggy. It isn’t just that Dakota Johnson’s Anne Elliott talks to camera, or even that she seems pathologically inclined to glance at us whenever anything happens whatsoever. No, it’s that she does all this while drinking wine from the bottle, crying in the bath and cuddling a small household pet. It is, hand on heart, one pencilly haircut away from straying into copyright infringement territory.
