Masterpiece
Sundays at 9 p.m.
on WKAR-HD and WKAR-23
"Masterpiece" Offers Two-Part "Sense and Sensibility"
Sense is correct judgment. Sensibility is quickness of emotion. Two sisters with wildly different proportions of each throw their hearts into the search for true love in Masterpiece’s delightful adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, airing Sundays, March 30-April 6, at 9 p.m.
Andrew Davies (Bleak House) wrote the screenplay for this final installment of The Complete Jane Austen, U.S. television’s first broadcast of all six of Austen’s immortal novels. Davies is renowned for his adaptations of many classic literary works, including the series’ versions of Northanger Abbey, Emma and Pride and Prejudice.
Newcomer Hattie Morahan plays the sister with sense, Elinor Dashwood, who is also kind, good-tempered and scrupulously discreet. Fortunately, Elinor has a passionate streak just waiting for release. On the sensibility side, Charity Wakefield (Jane Eyre) is Elinor’s outgoing, impetuous younger sister, Marianne, who is inclined to cast caution to the wind where men are concerned — a potentially ruinous path in late 18th-century English society. Before the story is over, however, Marianne learns to tap her inner reserves of rationality.
Janet McTeer (The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard) stars as the girls’ mother, the widowed matriarch of the little female band, living in virtual penury thanks to spineless stepson John Dashwood (Mark Gatiss) and his wicked wife, Fanny (Claire Skinner). Lucy Boynton plays the youngest sister, Margaret, who has a child’s gift for stating the obvious when her sisters are inclined to deceive themselves.
The men in this romantic fantasy are a mysterious lot. Dan Stevens plays Edward Ferrars, Fanny’s aimless but adorable brother, who wins Elinor’s heart early on but then inexplicably disappears. David Morrissey is stalwart Colonel Brandon, who overcomes a melodramatic episode of lost love from his past to fall head over heels for Marianne. Dominic Cooper is smoldering charmer John Willoughby, whom Marianne favors over the colonel.
Longtime Masterpiece fans will welcome the return of Jean Marsh, the house-parlor maid Rose in Upstairs, Downstairs,who appears in a quite different role in this production as Mrs. Ferrars, Edward and Fanny’s rich, imperious mother.
Sense and Sensibility was Jane Austen’s first published novel, appearing in 1811 to glowing reviews like this one: “The incidents are probable, and highly pleasing, and interesting; the conclusion such as the reader must wish it should be, and the whole is just long enough to interest without fatiguing.”
In an era rife with novels of courtship, Austen’s books stood out for their vivid characters, witty social commentary and satisfyingly complex routes to the altar. Sense and Sensibility fits the pattern with a pair of sisters who are as different as they can be, both facing the dim marriage prospects of the impoverished gentry.
Whether consciously or not, Austen goes in for a little symbolism to reflect her heroines’ plight: the novel contains more rain than any of her other books. In particular, the plot turns on two scenes in which Marianne is caught out in the elements.
Heightening the weather motif, screenwriter Davies employs a downpour for a scene emphasizing Edward’s love-tormented psyche. Davies also expands on a couple of episodes that Austen considered too shocking to write about in anything but cloaked language: a shameful seduction involving one of the protagonists and a duel to satisfy manly honor.
Of course, there is something else entirely that will satisfy womanly honor, and Austen sees that we get it exactly as we “wish it should be.”
published: March 25, 2008
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