Sense & Sensibility

Perhaps we are getting used to Andrew Davies's adaptations but I think he was below par here, perhaps because of the short duration. This version had what are known as "high production values", ie it looked good and was well-acted. However Jane Austen's dialogue and characterisation really lost out when compressed into three episodes. Andrew Davies would rightly say that 21st century television is a very different medium from an early nineteenth century novel. In its own terms, therefore, as a TV drama it was quite good, as bonnet-fests go. However if you had never read the book, you would have probably thought that much fuss has been made over a fairly uninteresting story. I guess you could compress Sense & Sensibility still further until people would believe that Jane Austen was first published by Mills and Boon.

On the plus side at least they got the characters' ages right. In the 1995 version Emma Thompson was 36 but playing a nineteen year old. However good she was, she was far too old for the part.