The Other Bennet Sister, episodes 1-3
Apr. 2nd, 2026 08:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessI succumbed to this. Succumbed? Well, I was a bit of a hold-out, I haven’t read the book it’s based on. I have a somewhat less than straightforward relationship with Austen derivative works, and I say that as someone who’s written fanfic. I might be prejudiced, but I did think the best lines in the first two episodes were lifted from Austen. I also think you’ll get maximum enjoyment from this if you are familiar with P&P and Austen’s oeuvre.
But eh, every episode is half an hour long, and as I found with Cardiac Arrest, a darker comedy drama, that’s refreshing, and makes it easy for episodes to slip down. What follows was watched in one sitting, more or less, which counts as bingeing for me.
1.1
Mary is the heroine here, and hugely sympathetic, (TV ‘plain’), who the housekeeper clearly favours. I love that the actress playing Hill played Mary in a previous adap. The show does the meta dance with the original, pairing the other four sisters off and having Mary be the tagalong odd one out. Ruth Jones’s Mrs Bennet is armed with a fan.
I objected to Jane being a bit too arch, and I thought Bingley and Darcy could have been hotter. Well, the Bingley more than the Darcy, who was suitably tall given that the Elizabeth was the tallest Bennet girl. I liked the casting of Caroline Bingley, though. I thought a little bit about how high Austen’s eyebrows would have raised at opticians of South Asian heritage, and could quibble with Mr Bennet ever being described as wealthy. But it’s 2026, so we got some pre-watershed suggestiveness about the Bennets’ lovelife in the early years of their marriage, and Mary swearing (!!!) but the idea of her being very young and very hemmed in by her family’s view of things, especially of her, came through loudly and clearly.
Speaking as someone who’s worn glasses all her life, why keep them on just as you’re blowing the lights out? Also, I was relieved that she’d got them back after putting them aside for the ball.
1.2 and 1.3
I’m grouping these two episodes together, because I can’t remember what happened when.
Mary, who must be 18 at most, which to the modern mind screams ‘should go find herself at uni’, had decided to be the studious one after her failure at romance at one ball. I initially liked that Charlotte, who would end up nabbing Mr Collings, was pointing out the obvious, i.e. that Collins was most compatible with Mary of all the sisters, although this was before they’d met. The casting director had gone for a shorter, squatter, young David Mitchell lookalike for Mr Collins. Mrs B would not yield in her determination that Mr C should marry Lizzie until it was too late, as Mary had pointed out.
The Netherfield do was excruciating. We were introduced to Indira Varma as Mrs Gardener (because at the moment, BBC dramas that I want to watch fell obliged to cast her, although it’s nice to see her playing someone more warm-hearted) – stepping in to be the mother that Mrs B isn’t for Mary. (I keep thinking about Austen’s eyebrows.)
Anyway, Lizzie turned Collins down, she and Mary had a moment about their different levels of social ease. Tall Charlotte turned up as short Collins’s fiancée, and her friendship with Lizzie got short shrift in this telling, while she explained herself more to Mary here. Mary didn’t quite see that she’d dodged the bullet of a man who was stupider than her.
We skipped the Lydia of it all, and the other sisters’ weddings were played out in a wonderfully economic way. (Am legit pleased for Kitty.) And so Mary was left alone with her warring parents, her father died suddenly, and the sisters returned (Lydia with a baby in her arms, of course.) So likely and true that Mrs B would be foisted upon good-natured Bingley and Jane, even if Darcy is richer, for I don’t think he, Elizabeth and Pemberley could stand her for long.
Mrs B continued to be an awful mother, having agreed to send Mary to be a stand-in governess (not the worst idea for her) for the Gardeners behind her back. To London Mary went, and a much expanded world, as Hill promised. Most of all, she found herself in a home where people were inclusive towards her. Granted, her syllabus for 11 and unders was…quite something (but the boy didn’t seem to be having nightmares about smallpox when he dozed off), but Mr Heyward was nice (died at her thing for manly forearms). I appreciated the nod to Persuasion in the conversation about reading tastes.
And then Mary befriended a young lady in a better fitting dress than her, and learned she and Mr Heyward were practically engaged. And the other lady was no Lucy Steele. Heigh-ho, maybe Mary and Tom were too much alike anyway.
Making Mary the endearingly awkward heroine (Ella Bruccoleri’s face shows all the feelings) is working, and the meta is interesting, even if it sometimes rubs against the purist in me. The purist that would probably be fine with modern day AUs. And yes, there’s a part of me that worries that being a purist about Austen makes me a Mary.
But eh, every episode is half an hour long, and as I found with Cardiac Arrest, a darker comedy drama, that’s refreshing, and makes it easy for episodes to slip down. What follows was watched in one sitting, more or less, which counts as bingeing for me.
1.1
Mary is the heroine here, and hugely sympathetic, (TV ‘plain’), who the housekeeper clearly favours. I love that the actress playing Hill played Mary in a previous adap. The show does the meta dance with the original, pairing the other four sisters off and having Mary be the tagalong odd one out. Ruth Jones’s Mrs Bennet is armed with a fan.
I objected to Jane being a bit too arch, and I thought Bingley and Darcy could have been hotter. Well, the Bingley more than the Darcy, who was suitably tall given that the Elizabeth was the tallest Bennet girl. I liked the casting of Caroline Bingley, though. I thought a little bit about how high Austen’s eyebrows would have raised at opticians of South Asian heritage, and could quibble with Mr Bennet ever being described as wealthy. But it’s 2026, so we got some pre-watershed suggestiveness about the Bennets’ lovelife in the early years of their marriage, and Mary swearing (!!!) but the idea of her being very young and very hemmed in by her family’s view of things, especially of her, came through loudly and clearly.
Speaking as someone who’s worn glasses all her life, why keep them on just as you’re blowing the lights out? Also, I was relieved that she’d got them back after putting them aside for the ball.
1.2 and 1.3
I’m grouping these two episodes together, because I can’t remember what happened when.
Mary, who must be 18 at most, which to the modern mind screams ‘should go find herself at uni’, had decided to be the studious one after her failure at romance at one ball. I initially liked that Charlotte, who would end up nabbing Mr Collings, was pointing out the obvious, i.e. that Collins was most compatible with Mary of all the sisters, although this was before they’d met. The casting director had gone for a shorter, squatter, young David Mitchell lookalike for Mr Collins. Mrs B would not yield in her determination that Mr C should marry Lizzie until it was too late, as Mary had pointed out.
The Netherfield do was excruciating. We were introduced to Indira Varma as Mrs Gardener (because at the moment, BBC dramas that I want to watch fell obliged to cast her, although it’s nice to see her playing someone more warm-hearted) – stepping in to be the mother that Mrs B isn’t for Mary. (I keep thinking about Austen’s eyebrows.)
Anyway, Lizzie turned Collins down, she and Mary had a moment about their different levels of social ease. Tall Charlotte turned up as short Collins’s fiancée, and her friendship with Lizzie got short shrift in this telling, while she explained herself more to Mary here. Mary didn’t quite see that she’d dodged the bullet of a man who was stupider than her.
We skipped the Lydia of it all, and the other sisters’ weddings were played out in a wonderfully economic way. (Am legit pleased for Kitty.) And so Mary was left alone with her warring parents, her father died suddenly, and the sisters returned (Lydia with a baby in her arms, of course.) So likely and true that Mrs B would be foisted upon good-natured Bingley and Jane, even if Darcy is richer, for I don’t think he, Elizabeth and Pemberley could stand her for long.
Mrs B continued to be an awful mother, having agreed to send Mary to be a stand-in governess (not the worst idea for her) for the Gardeners behind her back. To London Mary went, and a much expanded world, as Hill promised. Most of all, she found herself in a home where people were inclusive towards her. Granted, her syllabus for 11 and unders was…quite something (but the boy didn’t seem to be having nightmares about smallpox when he dozed off), but Mr Heyward was nice (died at her thing for manly forearms). I appreciated the nod to Persuasion in the conversation about reading tastes.
And then Mary befriended a young lady in a better fitting dress than her, and learned she and Mr Heyward were practically engaged. And the other lady was no Lucy Steele. Heigh-ho, maybe Mary and Tom were too much alike anyway.
Making Mary the endearingly awkward heroine (Ella Bruccoleri’s face shows all the feelings) is working, and the meta is interesting, even if it sometimes rubs against the purist in me. The purist that would probably be fine with modern day AUs. And yes, there’s a part of me that worries that being a purist about Austen makes me a Mary.
