Our Take
Janice Hadlow's novel asks a question that Austen readers have always had at the back of their minds: what happened to Mary? The plain one. The bookish one. The one nobody ever quite paid attention to. The answer, in both the novel and this adaptation, is that Mary was always more interesting than anyone gave her credit for — a frustrated intellectual in a world with almost no outlet for women like her, slowly learning to stop performing the person she thought she should be and start becoming herself. It's a quietly radical premise dressed up as a cozy BBC period drama, and it works beautifully. Ella Bruccoleri is a revelation. Richard E. Grant is exactly as good as you'd expect as Mr Bennet. The full ten episodes are on BritBox — and with a Christmas special on the way, now is the perfect time to catch up.
