Writing great sister acts (think the Bennett siblings of Pride and Prejudice, the Dashwoods of Sense and Sensibility) came naturally to Jane Austen. Or so we gather from Miss Austen, a poignant four-part Masterpiece drama adapted from Gill Hornby’s novel.
Set in 1830, more than a decade after Jane’s untimely passing at 41, the story focuses on her surviving sister and dearest friend, the loyal and adoring Cassandra (Keeley Hawes, exquisite as usual), who is determined to protect Jane’s privacy upon discovering a cache of her private letters written to her close friend, Eliza Fowle (Madeline Walker), also now deceased. (The series is unflinching in depicting the era’s shorter life spans.)
Through these missives, the past comes vividly to life, spinning a fable of unrequited love and undying sibling devotion worthy of Jane’s own fictions. Cassandra’s younger self, called Cassy (a radiant Synnøve Karlsen), is described in Jane’s letters as “the calm at the heart of us all,” and indeed she acts as a buffer between the defiantly independent Jane (a prickly and piquant Patsy Ferran), their flighty and fretful mother (Downton Abbey‘s Phyllis Logan), and a society that doesn’t quite know what to make of these ladies.
When Cassy suffers a terrible personal loss, she seemingly gives up when offered a second chance at romance. This exasperates the resolutely single Jane, who laments, “If my sister has one fault, it is a wanton appetite to deny herself the pleasures of life.”
The siblings’ emotional saga plays out against the elder Cassandra’s efforts to keep Jane’s letters from her calculating sister-in-law (Jessica Hynes), while trying to ensure that her newly orphaned friend Isabella (Rose Leslie), Eliza’s daughter, doesn’t squander her own chance at happiness with a dashing doctor (Alfred Enoch).
Jane, who despite her unattached status saw herself as “something of an expert on romantic matters,” would almost certainly approve.
Miss Austen, Series Premiere, Sunday, May 4, 9/8c, PBS
