The Other Bennett Sister

 The retelling of a much loved story from a different perspective will be always a bit of a challenge to digest, as change often is, so I was interested to see the first two episodes of The Other Bennett Sister which recovered the bare bones of Pride and Prejudice from the third, and perhaps least interesting of the Bennett Sisters, the plain and academic Mary ( Ella Bruccoleri)

This BBC adaptation has a lot to cram in to its first hour, so it all feels frothy and at a bit of a gallop, but we do get a flavour of how different this adaptation is. Mary is the ugly duckling for sure, but is seen by her mother as the main protagonist against the rest of her sisters getting successful marriages. Mrs Bennett ( Ruth Jones) plays the character as a hard bully. Gone has the humour and the hysteria and the desperation  of Brenda Blethyn’s version and in its place Jones gives us a cruel and nasty piece of work. HNo wonder poor Mary picks at her fingers all of the time. Mary is constantly criticised for holding her sisters back and although sister Lizzie is kind to her , there seems a distance between her and her siblings which makes Mary the underdog. The only warmth Mary receives is some gentle support from house keeper Mrs Hill ( Lucy Briers) and her aunt Mrs Gardiner ( Indira Varmer) so as we suddenly reach the time when all her siblings have left home and her father dies a new chapter with a new story stretches before us by the third episode. 

Mrs Hill

I’ll be interested to see where the story takes us.