Miss Austen

The finale should run you through a pack of handkerchiefs, unless you are some sort of heartless monster.

If you can get past the mannered stiffness typical of Masterpiece fare, it loosens up as it evolves into a perceptive and affectionate portrait of the kind of life Austen lived but barely wrote about.

Ms. Hawes is, as always, a fascinating performer, imbuing Cassandra with determination but no skills at covering her tracks, and yet making her sympathetic despite all her flaws. .... Ms. Ferran’s performance is a constant delight. .... Austen-ites will be eating it up.

It’s handsomely and thoughtfully made; with only a couple exceptions toward the end as it feels the pressure to wrap things up, it largely avoids the trap of creating melodrama for the sake of it. What the show lacks in sweeping romances (no drenched Mr. Darcy rising from a lake like some siren here), it makes up for in the intimacy of family, friendship, and the fears you’d never say aloud.

It is a lovely script with great performances (Rose Leslie and Synnove Karlsen, who plays the younger Cassie, also deserve a mention) and glorious touches.

The four-part series becomes ever more of a treat as it goes on – warm, intelligent, clear-eyed, confident and thought-provoking. How much is established fact and how much is the work of imagination, I am not equipped to know, but the beauty is that it all feels true; to the age, to the books and to what we know – or feel we know – about their author.

The truth is that we will never know what Jane wrote to her friends and that is probably exactly as it should be. But Miss Austen is nonetheless a gentle and charming period drama, filled with classy performances that will delight Austen fans if not necessarily spawn new ones.

The series is on solid ground when it flashes back (every time Cassandra rereads a letter) to the sisters’ younger days. Ferran is vibrant and convincing as Jane and Synnove Karlsen is wonderful as Cassy.

While it may take you awhile to figure out how everyone in Miss Austen is connected to each other, the performances of Hawes as the older Cassandra and Ferran as the young Jane will keep you interested in the story.

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. The series’ real juice comes when it focuses on Hawes as the elder Cassandra.

It’s a pleasant way to pass an hour. The insurmountable problem is that if you make a period drama about Jane Austen, it automatically draws comparison to a period drama by Jane Austen, and it will be found wanting.

It’s rather an unfair standard to hold them to. Miss Austen might not achieve the sororal interplay of the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility, the emotional range of Anne Elliot in Persuasion, or the romantic badinage of Mr Knightley and young Miss Woodhouse in Emma, but there’s still plenty to be admired.