PERSUASION
Cert PG ★★
On Netflix now
Jane Austen gets Fleabagged in a handsome but irritating take on the GCSE staple.
Dakota Johnson plays Anne Elliot, once a tortured romantic but here a smirking singleton who makes asides to the camera and has a sheet music “playlist” for her pianoforte.
Anne reaches for “a bottle of red” when her “ex”, dashing naval officer Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis), returns to Regency Somerset and starts wooing her sister-in-law.
There’s nothing wrong with updating the classics but jimmying in the language of modern dating feels patronising. I’m sure Anne could appeal to millennials without acting like a Fleabag rip-off.