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8 August 2006

Masterpiece Theatre to Broadcast Jane Austen Festival in 2007

Filed under: Mansfield Park 2007, Northanger Abbey 2007, Persuasion 2007, Screen, Sense and Sensibility 2008 — Mags @ 1:05 am

ETA: Masterpiece Theatre will broadcast the films starting in January 2008.

Most excellent news indeed! Alert Janeite and Intrepid Reporter Heather L. spotted a tidbit in one of the NA2007 press releases about WGBH (the PBS station that produces Masterpiece Theatre) broadcasting the new adaptation. She e-mailed the station and received the following response:

Northanger Abbey is currently scheduled to air as part of the Masterpiece Theatre series in November 2007. It will air along with Mansfield Park, Sense & Sensibility and Persuasion as part of a Jane Austen Festival.

We already knew about S&S on Masterpiece Theatre, but this is excellent news for the rest of the films! We’ll be getting these about six months behind the U.K., we believe.

Looks like they won’t be including EMMA (the 1996 version with Kate Beckinsale) as ITV will, since A&E owns the rights to that on this side of the pond, and A&E is busy with roller derby and bounty hunters these days.

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Okay, they win the Internets

Filed under: Jane in the News — Mags @ 12:58 am

Definitely the best Austen reference we’ve seen in ages.

In the Jane Austen novel that has become Mercury Interactive’s financial story in the past 12 months, it was HP playing the role of Mr. Knightley last month, riding to the rescue with an offer to buy Mercury for $4.5 billion and, thus, save the company from itself.

Mr. Knightley kicks the ground with his gaitered foot, smiling shyly and mumbling something about “just doing what was necessary, ma’am.”

There’s also a sweet little reference to Northanger Abbey in an article about traveling in Wales; on any other day, we would have been more readily charmed by it, but today it suffers in comparison.

AS Catherine Morland learned in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, reading too much into the word abbey is a recipe for false expectations of gothic splendour. Little is left of the sixth-century abbey that gives Penally Abbey Country House its name. But there’s a ruined medieval chapel in the garden and the windows and doors of the main building boast suitably gothic pointed arches.

Miss Morland would no doubt have been thoroughly delighted with the ruined chapel.

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