A new kind of Jane Austen
CLASSIC: IT’S A DIFFERENT WORLD, WITH A FASCINATING CAST OF CHARACTERS
Her 70 pages or so yielded material for first episode, but she had laid a foundation.
In the last year of her life, Jane Austen embarked on a new novel, a bold departure from anything she had done before. Of course, she provides us with a spirited young heroine and a fascinatingly complex and moody hero, but the setting is new, and the Parker brothers embody a new kind of Jane Austen character: they are men of affairs, entrepreneurs, men who want to change the world they live in and leave their mark on it.
You could say it’s a bit like
Boardwalk Empire: Tom Parker is trying to develop a sleepy fishing village into a fashionable seaside resort. He’s mortgaged his property to the hilt, borrowed from all and sundry, and now he’s transforming Sanditon before our very eyes. Young Charlotte Heywood comes to stay and falls in love with Sanditon and the whole enterprise.
It’s a different world for her, with a fascinating cast of characters: the eccentric and endearing Parker family, Lady Denham, the rich and domineering patroness, Sir Edward Denham and his stepsister Esther, whose relationship seems a little too close; Lady Denham’s protégé Clara, the poor relation, who has something clandestine going on with Sir Edward – and Miss Lambe, the heiress from the West Indies, Jane Austen’s first black character!
And at that point Jane laid aside her manuscript, too unwell to continue; and she died soon after. Her 70 pages or so yielded only enough material for half of our first episode, but she had laid a solid foundation.
Mix in a few quarrels, schemes and misunderstandings, a couple of balls, and a bit of naked sea bathing (for the men) and we have a fascinating set of possibilities. The 1820s, when we set our story, saw a huge explosion of holidays for pleasure and for health reasons, both seaside resorts and inland spas – and a great entrepreneurial spirit of “if we build it, they will come”.
Men like Tom Parker were making vast fortunes – and just as many were going bankrupt by misjudging the market. And resorts like Sanditon were attractive to visitors because they were places where you could meet new people, goggle at celebrities, create a new personality for yourself, fall in love – anything was possible. Cue lots of research into the 1820s, and lots of imaginative brain-cudgelling. Lots of meetings with producers and lots of jolly lunches.
ITV wanted to go into production quickly, and there wasn’t going to be enough time for me to write all eight scripts, so once the overall structure was set, we agreed that I would write the first three episodes and the last. From here on, everything happened bewilderingly quickly: Olly Blackburn, the director and Grant Montgomery, the production director, outlined their vision for the show, and soon we were casting, with established stars like Anne Reid, Kris Marshall and Theo James (Divergent) and newcomers Rose Williams and Crystal Clarke as our heroine Charlotte and Miss Lambe.
I am thrilled with what we have achieved: a period of drama that feels utterly fresh and modern – Jane Austen, but not as you knew her. Written only months before Jane Austen’s death in 1817,
Sanditon tells the story of the joyously impulsive, spirited and unconventional Charlotte Heywood and her spiky relationship with the charming Sidney Parker.
When a chance accident transports her from her rural hometown to the would-be coastal resort of Sanditon, it exposes Charlotte to the intrigues and dalliances of a seaside town on the make, and the characters whose fortunes depend on its commercial success.
The twists and turns of the plot, which takes viewers from the Caribbean to the rotting alleys of London, exposes the hidden agendas of each character and sees Charlotte discover herself… and ultimately find love.