Finally, An Austen-ish Adaptation Worth Watching

Mary Bennet, middle of five, has few virtues to recommend her. Unlike her eldest sister, Jane, she is not beautiful. Nor is she witty, like second-eldest Elizabeth. Her younger sister, Kitty, may be frivolous, but at least she is good-humored and has a fun nickname. Youngest daughter Lydia, meanwhile, is disastrously reckless, but you can’t deny she has spirit. Although one might think Jane Austen, bookish and unwed as she was, would draw Mary with some degree of sympathy, she describes her in Pride and Prejudice as having “neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached.” Ouch.

Mary is not the most obvious candidate to helm a romantic comedy, and yet the Jane Austen Industrial Complex—this is how I tend to think of the interminable production of books, films, tv shows, and other ephemera that bear some relation to the author and her works—is in constant need of new material. Eventually, someone would notice Mary over there in the corner, reading a book about rocks.

And thank god for that, because the BBC’s The Other Bennet Sister (adapted from Janice Hadlow’s 2020 novel of the same name) is a rare treasure: an Austen-ish adaptation that actually justifies its own existence. The first three episodes became available in the U.S. via BritBox on May 6, with subsequent episodes releasing weekly. There are 10 altogether, each coming in at a delightful 30 minutes.