Pride and property:
Unfinished Jane Austen drama comes to TV.
Despite having written only 70 pages of her final novel before falling too ill to complete it and dying shortly afterwards, Jane Austen’s Sanditon has been brought imaginatively to life in a sumptuous new period drama.
Austen’s words take up only half of the first episode. The rest is from award-winning dramatist Andrew Davies, who has adapted a string of period dramas including Les Miserables, War And Peace, Sense And Sensibility and Pride And Prejudice.
The story, set in the 1820s, begins with a spirited farm girl, Charlotte Heywood, witnessing a carriage accident. The travellers, Tom Parker (Kris Marshall) and his wife Mary (Kate Ashfield), are brought back to her parents’ house to recover and their kindness is rewarded when Charlotte is invited to join entrepreneur Tom’s exciting new project – developing the small fishing village of Sanditon into a fashionable seaside resort.
On arrival she is mesmerised by the town’s glamorous inhabitants, but she soon discovers they behave in curious and immoral ways.
“Charlotte is slightly more modern than usual Jane Austen heroines,” says Rose Williams, who plays her. “Her focus isn’t on finding a husband. She is pretty headstrong and is really interested in architecture and the way that Tom is building his vision to fruition.
“However, it is also a love story and there’s an Austen, ‘will they, won’t they?’ with her and Tom’s brother, Sidney (Theo James).
“She has been raised on a farm and has wanted to break out and see something of the world. But she has been instilled with a
strong moral
backbone and Sanditon is a whole new world for her.
“She may have had ideas of the world, fashion and how people carry themselves, but they are all fantasies in her imagination.
“So when she comes across these people it really isn’t what she expected. She witnesses a dysfunction she has not seen before. She is a girl, not yet a woman and it’s a story of finding herself. She is not accustomed to the upper-class etiquette or these people’s values.”
One of her first encounters is with the indomitable and wealthy Lady Denham (Anne Reid), who likeable Tom has persuaded to finance his ambitious project.
“The great joy of playing Lady Denham is that Jane Austen provided a very clear description of her over a couple of pages,” says Anne Reid, who stars with Derek Jacobi in Last Tango In Halifax.
“She’s very mean with her money and can be rude and outspoken and Charlotte is in her firing line as soon as she arrives.
“Lady Denham isn’t terribly bright but she’s instinctive and has agreed to finance Tom’s plans for Sanditon because he has told her that she will get a good return on her investment. But when it doesn’t go according to plan it causes a lot of problems.
“She was born well off but she hates parting with money. But we all know people like that, don’t we? The ones who run away when the restaurant bill comes. It’s so unlike me, I can tell you. I just spend money like it’s going out of fashion.
“I’ll end up in a cardboard box, somewhere, I know I will. But my father brought me up like that.
“I wanted Lady Denham to be a funny character. It was so nice to play someone who is from the ‘upstairs’ of the house, rather than ‘downstairs’, which is where I am usually cast.
“What is it about my face? I must look domesticated. In the re-make of Upstairs Downstairs,I played the cook. But in real life I am the worst cook in England. I am also the least domesticated person you will ever meet. My home looks like a tip.”
Other faces in Sanditon include Jane Austen’s first black character, Miss Lambe (Crystal Clarke), a wealthy young heiress from the West Indies, who mysteriously arrives with Sidney as his ‘ward’ and strikes up a friendship with Charlotte. Sir Edward Denham (Jack Fox) is Lady Denham’s womanising nephew who is eager to get her hands on her money. And Esther Denham (Charlotte Spencer) is Edward’s aloof stepsister with a line of withering put-downs and an unrequited love for Edward.
Reid is full of praise for how Andrew Davies has handled the script.
“Andrew has a mastery of character. He has wit and subtlety.
“He also understands the period very well because he has done such a lot of it. I hope the Jane Austen purists will not disapprove of what he has done. I think he’s created something extraordinary.”
“It was so nice to play someone who is from the ‘upstairs’ of the house, rather than ‘downstairs,’ which is where I am usually cast.” – Anne Reid