BBC to air Miss Austen Regrets in autumn 2007
Alert Janeites Sarah L. and Franka sent us the BBC’s press release about its autumn lineup, including Miss Austen Regrets. The program will be part of “The Complete Jane Austen” to be shown on PBS beginning in January 2008 (we suspect it will be last of the group, so probably closer to April). Interestingly, no mention of the new Sense and Sensibility adaptation in the autumn Beeb lineup. Some details about the film (and editorial snark) behind the cut.
Based on her life and letters, Miss Austen Regrets tells the story of Jane Austen’s final years.
When asked by her young niece, Fanny, to help vet potential husbands, Jane finds herself re-examining her own romantic life.
As she approaches 40 years of age, Jane appears happily unmarried and, to her niece, she seems an expert on love. Protected by her wit, Jane presents a front as dazzling as many of her novels’ young heroines, but events conspire to potentially expose Jane’s principled theories on love and marriage as ill-judged.
A chance re-acquaintance with a former suitor sees Jane lose her composure,
If the “former suitor” is Tom Lefroy we shall not be responsible for our actions. That being said, from the full description it might be Harris Bigg-Wither. Dorothy’s taking odds, cash only, no IOUs.
and, when she meets her brother’s dashing young physician, her passions are ignited.
Um…is this the one whose name escapes us who she wrote of in a few letters? We believe that he was thought of by Jane and Cassandra as a possible suitor for Fanny, not Jane. They didn’t really go there, did they? *buries head in hands*
Then, when her family faces financial ruin, it becomes apparent that all could have been very different had Jane accepted a marriage proposal from a wealthy landowner…
WHO DO WE HAVE TO KILL TO GET A HALFWAY DECENT BALLY JANE AUSTEN BIOPIC? One that isn’t full of Radcliffean glurge and melodrama? Seriously! Paris Hilton? We’ll poison her “water” bottle. Donald Trump? We’ll plant a bomb in his wig. Osama bin Laden? We’ll send the Laconia after him! Rule Britannia! We will do it! Just please, for the love of all that is holy and Janelike, stop the madness!
July 11th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
A Jane Austen Liberation Front? Sign me up for the Militant wing.
July 11th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Hmm, I guess I better get started on my JA biopic script then. Drat, I was hoping this would be a good one.
Well, there’s always hope for another, better piece, some time in the unnamed future.
July 11th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
John, you know, I’m getting there. I’ve always been a big-tent kind of Janeite, but I’m beginning to think we need to hire a few bouncers to keep out the ragtag and bobtail, know what I mean?
As I told my Janeite Posse the other night, I’m having one of my periodic Janeite existential crises. I love doing this blog, but sometimes you can be too close to it all. But this too shall pass, and perhaps a few good Janeites will be born of it, and the others will be distracted by the next shiny object.
July 12th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Every major newspaper in the country has an article about the new Masterpiece Theater and Jane Austen. Most are try to find a hook to lure the readers in. Here’s the opening paragraph from the Boston Globe:
“It could be argued that the heroines of Jane Austen’s novels are the precursors to “Desperate Housewives” — or even the ladies of “Sex and the City.” So if anyone can convince TV viewers that PBS’s “Masterpiece Theatre” is relevant and modern, it might be a British woman who has been dead for nearly two centuries.”
July 12th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Hi,I am a Janeite from China.
In my country there are a lot of girls loving Jane Austen’s novels as well. However some of them consider Sex and the City as a modern version of Pride and Prejudice. Since one sentence in SATC is based on the well-known saying in classic P&P. In my opinion,”It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”is partly different from “Although some people find its lack of sentiment and cruel humor disturbing,it’s probably only because the book contains some kind of universal truth.” “universal truth” in different time has different meaning.
Austen’s novel shouldn’t be any commercial propaganda for soap opera.
July 12th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
You’re correct Jessie, they shouldn’t. It’s disrespectful and ignorant.
I have nothing against Sex and the City but like you say, it’s a soap opera, not literature.
July 12th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
GAAH! We were all relying on this one to put all the Becoming Jane and P+P3 Janeites right!! And to keep us sane, give us hope for the future of Janeism and other seemingly unrealistic dreams.
Why does it have to be a “former suitor”? We’d all love the BBC if they wrote a lovely, Jane-like fictional story with the unnamed suitor by the sea sans Hollywood melodrama, costumes and ideas (i.e. *in syrupy Valley-girl voice* “Jane was, like, soooo ahead of her time…watch her play cricket with the boys. Wow! She is such a revolutionary!” or “All these BBC period dramas are unrealistic, let’s show the real Regency–with pigs in the house and the girls in the barnyard”). A real Janeite, or at least someone w/respect for Jane and the period should write it. And please not Andrew Davies–he’s getting worse and worse (i.e. more and more horny)!
July 13th, 2007 at 8:03 am
why didn’t jane austen marry the wealthy landowner?
July 13th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Because she didn’t love him.
July 13th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Um…is this the one whose name escapes us who she wrote of in a few letters?
Caught him for you, Mags—Charles Thomas Haden, a (then) 29-year old up-and-coming physician with connections to the Regency.
I don’t want to overplay it, but neither do I wish to trivialize the possibility that she did have a crush on the guy; but I think that at 40 years of age, she was also enough of a pragmatist to know that nothing could come of it.
July 13th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
So putting it in the movie is still annoying. Let the poor woman have a little dignity.
July 17th, 2007 at 7:04 am
GAAH! We were all relying on this one to put all the Becoming Jane and P+P3 Janeites right!! And to keep us sane, give us hope for the future of Janeism and other seemingly unrealistic dreams.
I’ve been reading, studying and loving Jane Austen’s work since 1969. I’ve seen every adaptation that’s on videotape/DVD. I loved P&P3 and I also enjoyed Becoming Jane (I went last night with my JASNA chapter and it was very well received).
But according to you, I’m a brainless idiot who doesn’t know anything for the simple reason that I don’t agree with you. Do you have any idea at all how insulting that is?
July 17th, 2007 at 8:02 am
That’s not what she said. Stop putting words in other people’s mouths and stop picking fights for no reason. Not everyone is going to like Becoming Jane. Deal with it, or you might as well just get off the Internet for the next year.
If you want to defend the film, defend it on its merits. Don’t belittle others for their opinion, don’t build straw men, and don’t pick stupid fights.
July 17th, 2007 at 10:48 am
I understand that not everyone will like the movie and that not everyone likes P&P3, but how is this statement
not an implication that anyone who does like these movies is somehow deficient? I despise MP2, but I have NEVER, EVER said that people who like it are stupid or ignorant or that they need to be “put right.” How is defending my intelligence picking a fight or building a straw man or belittling someone else?
Everyone I talked to at JASNA last night thought Becoming Jane was rather entertaining. The person who introduced the film before the screening pointed out that it is NOT based on fact but that it was based on imagination and on “what if…?”. When Anne Hathaway spoke after the film, she agreed that it is not biographical. The two scholars who were on the panel also liked it as a film that could be seen as an homage to the books rather than as a biography. As a film in its own right it was enjoyable and I will most likely see it again when it opens for real.
July 17th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
I took it to mean that she didn’t care for those films and was hoping this one would make up for it. In any event, one must allow for the heat of a disappointed moment.