Keeley Hawes’ Regency Drama Is an Uneven Exploration of Jane Austen’s Less Famous Sister

With the 250th anniversary of the legendary Jane Austen’s birth arriving this year, it’s only appropriate that we celebrate the literary heroine’s legacy in some way that isn’t just another adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. (Looking at you, Netflix.) Given that the author’s novels have been adapted numerous times on TV and film, Masterpiece on PBS is taking another approach to things with the new series Miss Austen, which focuses not on Jane herself, but on her sister, Cassandra.

Based on the novel of the same name by Gill Hornby, Miss Austen follows an aging Cassandra Austen, played by the superb Keeley Hawes, as she journeys back to the home of her childhood friend Eliza, where her youngest daughter, Isabella (Rose Leslie), is being forced out of her lodgings by the death of her father. As she endeavors to find Isabella new lodgings, Cassandra also has another purpose, one she hides from even those closest to her: searching the house for letters her sister Jane wrote to Eliza in life, in order to burn them and keep a promise to her late sister.

In reality, we have no idea why Cassandra burned a large portion of Jane’s letters. (Of an estimated three thousand, fewer than two hundred of them survive.) Some, she gifted to friends and family, but most were lost for some reason known only to the two sisters. The series attempts to rectify that hole in our historical knowledge by recreating what creator Andrea Gibb thinks may have been in them, represented in flashbacks with Synnøve Karlsen and Patsy Ferran as a younger Cassandra and Jane.

‘Miss Austen’ Writes Its Own Fantasy

This isn’t the first time artists have tried to fill in the gaps in Austen’s life with their version of events; the 2007 film Becoming Jane notably fabricated just as much as Miss Austen does, if not more, by implying that Jane had a mad affair with the so-called “love of her life,” a real man by the name of Tom Lefroy. The Masterpiece series attempts to strike the same chord, this time with Cassandra, by inserting a fictional man (played by noted nepo baby Max Irons) into her life after the death of her fiancé, Tom Fowle, when the family makes a trip to the seaside. In a plot that very much reflects several of Austen’s novels, including Emma and Persuasion, the mysterious stranger is clearly taken with her, though it only ends up running in frustrating circles as it tries to pull off all the charm of an Austenite hero with none of the payoff.

It’s obvious that Miss Austen is attempting to project some of Jane’s idyllic tropes from her novels onto the lives of the author and her sister, turning them from normal, everyday women (one of whom happened to be a literary genius) into archetypal heroines. The girls’ mother (Phyllis Logan) becomes a Mrs. Bennett stand-in, and if Jessica Hynes’ sister-in-law Mary Austen appears to be written as close as one can get to Catherine de Bourgh in real life. It feels a bit like Sanditon, the series that took Jane’s final, unfinished novel and completed the tale itself, constructing a narrative where there isn’t one.

This is particularly obvious in the case of Irons’ Mr. Hobday, who is nothing if not a Darcy proxy. Irons is a fine actor, and certainly as charming as needs be for an Austen hero, but there’s a dissonance in his presence, and it’s difficult to tell if it comes from the character being hollow or the fact that Irons is teetering just on the edge of iPhone face. He does his best, certainly, and it’s disappointing to see him go as the series veers back into the strictly factual, but there’s little to be said about how much of the series is taken up by a plot that doesn’t quite mesh with its overarching themes of grief and familial love.

Keeley Hawes Is the True Gem of ‘Miss Austen’

The series’ real juice comes when it focuses on Hawes as the elder Cassandra, wracked with grief not only at her sister’s private letters, but at the idea that Isabella’s own sisters want nothing to do with her. Hawes gives a subtly devastating performance as a woman who never had a place to put her grief after illness stole her best friend from her, and it’s a shame that so much of the series is dedicated to flashbacks when there was more than enough to explore in how Cassandra aged without the companionship of her dearest companion.

Hawes’ performance is only enhanced by Hynes’ at points comical turn as the vain Mary Austen. Both slide into the Regency era almost without trying — which can’t really be said for their younger counterparts — and as much as I think of Hynes as one of those incredible character actors whose name I can never remember, Mary’s incredible selfishness makes Cassandra’s grief all the more profound. In a series whose only real antagonist is death itself, she provides the necessary friction when it comes to destroying Jane’s letters, which is exactly what viewers will show up for.

Using Jane’s letters as a frame story for the series’ flashbacks is a clever structure, but when the series really hinges on the question of why Cassandra chose to burn them, it’s difficult to say if its final act really works. Whether a filled-in answer adds anything meaningful to the story it’s telling is a subject for debate, and the same is true of the mystery of Austen’s burnt letters. Without delving into spoilers, the not knowing is arguably more interesting than the answer Miss Austen tries to give us — the mystery of Jane’s life makes the characters she created all the more interesting, and it seems foolish to reveal the (wo)man behind the curtain, to quote another literary classic, if Cassandra’s intention truly was to keep her sister’s reputation intact.

It’s a toss-up whether Miss Austen’s speculation will land with audiences when the series arrives in the U.S. Fans of historical dramas who want to be swept away by a story of love and loss may enjoy it, with all its colorful imaginings that reflect their favorite novels. For diehard Austenites, however, the question remains. But then again, if viewers can accept an unfinished novel as part of the canon of one of the greatest authors ever, maybe they can enjoy this too.

Miss Austen premieres May 4 on Masterpiece on PBS.