\n\tTo hear Mary (Ella Bruccoleri) tell it, she is no one special. She is not \u201cthe beautiful one\u201d of her sisters, nor \u201cthe quick-witted one,\u201d and she is certainly not \u201cthe ones who are good at games and full of youthful energy.\u201d If she is anything, she is the odd duck, seemingly doomed to a future of getting overlooked by suitors and dismissed by her family.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt is both ironic and entirely appropriate, then, that this very ordinariness is precisely what makes her such a striking heroine in The Other Bennet Sister<\/a>, BritBox<\/a>\u2019s wildly charming effort to reframe the resident frump of Pride & Prejudice. With its refreshingly grounded tone, generous sense of empathy and, above all, absolutely marvelous lead, the series pulls off the neat trick of convincingly expanding on Jane Austen<\/a> while standing proudly on its own two feet.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tThe Other Bennet Sister\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n \tGrounded yet enchanting.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tAirdate: Wednesday, May 6 (BritBox) \n\tLike Mary, however, the series (adapted by Sarah Quintrell from the novel by Janice Hadlow) takes time to come fully into itself. Its opening chapters are a dutiful retelling of the events from Austen\u2019s classic, this time from Mary\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n \n\tSo while Elizabeth (Poppy Gilbert) meets Darcy (Victor Pilard) at the ball, we\u2019re off with Mary on the sidelines, hoping against hope she\u2019ll be asked to dance. When Elizabeth rejects Collins (Ryan Sampson), we hear the news as she does \u2014 secondhand from her gossipy younger sisters (Molly Wright\u2019s Kitty and Grace Hogg-Robinson\u2019s Lydia). And while the rest of the Bennet girls go off one by one into wedded bliss, we remain stuck at home with Mary, her hypercritical mother (Ruth Jones) and disengaged father (Richard E. Grant).<\/p>\n \n\tIt could all be rather tedious, if not for two things. One is Mary\u2019s narration, matter-of-fact but subtly funny and judiciously deployed, which helps to establish who this unconventional young woman is even before Mary herself seems to know. The other is the show\u2019s brisk pacing. The end of the second episode marks the end of familiar territory, as a jolt of fate sends Mary to stay with her aunt (a very likable Indira Varma) and uncle (Richard Coyle) in London. From that point on, the remaining eight half-hours episodes represent completely uncharted waters.<\/p>\n \n\tWell \u2014 mostly uncharted waters, anyway. Like its parent story, The Other Bennet Sister<\/a> is very much concerned with the attracting, rejecting and\/or accepting of potential suitors, here including a charismatic bon vivant named Mr Ryder (The Girlfriend<\/a>\u2019s Laurie Davidson) and a sensitive lawyer named Mr Heyward (D\u00f3nal Finn). And despite Mary\u2019s insistences, in voiceover, that her romantic fate is \u201calmost beside the point,\u201d the series puts far more shading into her flirtations than it does non-romantic connections like her fast friendship with the clever Ann Baxter (Varada Sethu).<\/p>\n \n\tBut The Other Bennet Sister does successfully frame Mary\u2019s love life as subordinate to the much richer and more rewarding story of her self-actualization. If Austen-inspired works have frequently taken inspiration from unforgivingly hierarchical milieus like high school<\/a> or the gay party scene<\/a>, Mary\u2019s saga might be the subgenre\u2019s version of a going-to-college story<\/a>, in which a lifelong misfit gets a chance at reinvention. Away for the first time from the sisters who\u2019ve always overshadowed her and the mother who\u2019s never appreciated her, and encouraged by the guidance of her endlessly patient aunt, Mary blossoms from a painfully insecure wallflower into an independent-minded young woman.<\/p>\n \n\tHer road there is not without some minor missteps. On Mary\u2019s part, those include some garish dresses that (in a smart bit of costuming by Sian Jenkins) speak to both Mary\u2019s newfound boldness and her clumsiness in wielding it, as well as some bruising interactions with the hilariously bitchy Caroline Bingley (Tanya Reynolds). On the show\u2019s, it includes a portrayal of Mrs. Bennet so cartoonishly unpleasant that even the last-ditch effort to deepen her lands with a thud, and a couple cheesy moments that lean too far into fan service. (Is it even a Regency romance if a handsome man in a white shirt isn\u2019t getting drenched?)<\/p>\n \n\tBut those are tiny quibbles about a series that otherwise demonstrates an impressive command of tone, pacing and (most crucially of all) characterization. As Mary finds her footing as a governess to the Gardiners, as she visits new places and meets new people, as she starts to see a future for herself beyond the \u201cmarriage or misery\u201d dichotomy drilled into her all her life, she becomes more the guileless, bookish nerd we met at the start, not less. The difference is that, increasingly freed of the insecurities and anxieties holding her back, she starts to embrace those qualities as gifts, not flaws.<\/p>\n \n\tBruccoleri\u2019s precision-cut lead turn is an absolute boon in this regard. \u201cYou lack artifice. Your qualities shine out. They\u2019re not corrupted by the false polish of the world,\u201d an admirer marvels at one point, and though he\u2019s talking about Mary, he could just as well be describing Bruccoleri\u2019s fantastically dynamic performance. At a time when so many series seem engineered with the assumption that inattentive viewers require every nuance spelled out for them, Bruccoleri invites you to lean in for close study. Putting her face through a million tiny expressions in the space of a sigh, conveying volumes of complicated emotion just through the way she adjusts her glasses, she\u2019s never less than a thrill to watch.<\/p>\n \n\tIf there\u2019s a downside to this emphasis on thoughtful self-discovery over such \u201cfripperies\u201d as balls and proposals, it\u2019s that at some point I felt myself bracing for the show\u2019s inevitable recursion to Regency romance tropes. By the time it got there, though, I couldn\u2019t find it in me to be disappointed \u2014 not when the series had so thoroughly won me over to Mary and her wishes. That The Other Bennet Sister delivers as both a love story and a coming-of-age journey makes it a treat. That it manages to do so in entirely its own way, sacrificing none of its unique spirit in the process, makes it indelible. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To hear Mary (Ella Bruccoleri) tell it, she is no one special. 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Cast: Ella Bruccoleri, Indira Varma, D\u00f3nal Finn, Laurie Davidson, Ruth Jones, Richard E. Grant, Richard Coyle
Creator: Sarah Quintrell, based on the book by Janice Hadlow\t\t\t<\/p>\n