The Other Bennet Sister starts tonight on BBC1 8pm

[IwantToRetire]

Seemingly unremarkable and often overlooked, Mary Bennet longs to win her family’s approval.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002qkp3

Is this going to be a spoof or some sort of spin off ?

2nd episode tonight at 8:30

Couldn't see a thread so hope this isn't a duplicate!

I thought of David Mitchell too!

Loved the scene where they all find out Mr Collins is marrying Charlotte. Mrs Bennet realising how much she has messed it all up and essentially lost their estate to her neighbours.

They absolutely would have had people of colour around them! As a world-plundering bunch of colonialists, they would have experienced that interchange.
If you read 'Vanity Fair' (written later but set then), there are some horrible contemporary attitudes in the depiction of 'the heiress from St Kitts' and George Osborne's objections to marrying her... 😡

But back to Mary - she was given the 'Persuasion' plot here - Anne Elliot's early love-match put off by her relatives because he wasn't 'the right stuff'... (And oh, wasn't Mr Sparrow lovely about it! So hurt but so gallant in not causing her further pain)...

Mr Sparrow was lovely and how sad for Mary to have tell him she couldn't dance again, they clearly could have had a very happy life together. He was so impressed by her book reading whilst most men of that time would have discouraged women, especially their wives, learning to such a level.

How old was Mary in the books?

Wasn't she supposedly as silly as Kitty & Lydia?

So may not have made a good vicar's wife?

She was between Lizzie and Kitty so 18 ish. Bookish and despairing of the frivolities of her younger sisters.

I wasn't aware they'd televised this. I did read the book, though, soon after it was first published and thought it did illustrate something that has changed little between Austen's time and our own. That is, the assumption that the measure of a woman's worth is the ability to get and keep a man.

Mary's outcome was predictable but disappointing. I'm also not too fond of what they did to Charlotte (I liked the Austen original; she had good sense). But I do find these two the most interesting characters of the original novel. In very different ways they represent the very real (restrictive) choices women of that era had to make, and Mary was always the one who I silently cheered for. She was the typical neglected middle child but marched to the beat of her own drum.

Will give it a watch - thanks for posting.

Mary was the middle sister. About 18 when P&P begins. Mr Bennet described all his daughters as silly when in fact only the two youngest really were. Jane and Lizzie were his clear favourites and I don't think he really knew any of the other three with much closeness. He was rather an indifferent father, spending most of time hiding away from all of them including his wife and burying his head in the sand about the fate of his family.

Poor Mary was very much stuck in the middle, not much in common with any of her sisters, who naturally formed their own pairs, and seen as the plain, undesirable one by her own mother. She was awkward, liked to show off her love of books and struggled with social conversation. But really, we don't hear much of her in the original novel, she only has a few lines, and we form an idea of her in our own imagination.

Still waiting for @topcat2026to explain the woke comment 🤣

Oh thank you for posting this thread - I never look at TV schedules but I heard good things about this book so will watch!

She was awkward, liked to show off her love of books and struggled with social conversation.

Yes.

I don't think she would have suited Mr Collins!

Of course if she had married him then I wonder if the others would have felt they were secure at Longbourn even after their father's death?

No, they would have clashed enormously! Charlotte would have let Mr Collins believe he was lord of the manor in exchange for a quiet, comfortable life.

I'm really struggling to enjoy it, I usually love period dramas but this seems so dumbed down and silly?!
Mary is likeable but it's so obvious she's our heroine and the rest of the family aren't very pleasant.
It seems like the series could have been made with the view of selling it abroad to viewers who want the twee classical music, easy to understand and period Englishness of it all?
I'll keep going I'm only 10 minutes in lol!

And me!

I often wonder like I did in this one, how it must be to be asked to play a part where the character is seen as undesirable or 'ugly'.

How does that make the actor feel?

Also she does a lot of strange gurning and face pulling, whats that about?

That's a good question but if I was an actor I'd be so happy to have a role I wouldn't really care

I've watched the 5 episodes and loved them. I wish the rest were available

Another teeny-tiny thing... nice to see a bit of armpit fuzz, but no way would Mary have dunked her hair in the bath before a ball - it would have taken a day and a night to dry! No Air Wraps for Austen...

💆‍♀️

The Navigation Act 1660 restricted the employment of non-English sailors to a quarter of the crew on returning East India Company ships. Baptism records in East Greenwich suggest that a small number of young Indians from the Malabar Coast were being recruited as house servants at the end of the 17th century, and records of the EIC also suggest that Indo-Portuguese cooks from Goa were retained by captains from voyage to voyage.[10] In 1797, 13 were buried in the parish of St Nicholas at Deptford. During the 19th century, the East India Company brought thousands of Indian lascars, scholars and workers to Britain largely to work on ships and in ports.[11] It is estimated 8,000 Indians (a proportion being lascar sailors) lived in Britain permanently prior to the 1950s.[12][13][14] Due to the majority of early Asian immigrants being lascar seamen, the earliest Indian communities were found in port towns. Naval cooks also accompanied them.

From your link. It would have been extremely unlikely that there would have been an Asian optician operating in Meryton, in Hertfordshire, in 1811. You can argue for colourblind casting but please don't try and argue this is historically accurate.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNR9drp9H/

This very question comes up here

I am half way througn the second episode. Its ok but not great Mary Bennett is good. Elizabeth absolutely miscast . All in all a bit disappointing. Mr Bennett pretty awful. Loved the1995 BBC Mr Bennett.

Yes, but she is described as equally silly, just in a different sort of way.

I thought Lizzy was badly cast, she looked much too old. Prefer RJ’s Mrs B to AS, who was insufferable!
i look forward to the rest of the series, I won’t binge, but not sure yet that I’ll read the book. P&P is a real favourite that I read either in full or odd chapters time and again.

I loved Alison Steadman's screeching caricature.