I have only just started listening to this as an audiobook after reading it some years ago, so this will be only one post. In light of the fact that the version we have was completed shortly before Jane Austen’s death, and is significantly shorter than the novels published in her lifetime, I think it’s reasonable to imagine that she would have expanded it in size and complexity if she’d had time, and plugged some plot holes along the way. This makes me feel comfortable with tweaking the fates and agendas of several of the supporting characters. Also, any miniseries-length adaptation needs fun, non-repetitive little bits of Anne hanging out with Benwick, and the Musgroves and Harvilles and so on.

-Captain Wentworth: look, I enjoyed watching grim, broody Ciaran Hinds back in the day like everyone else, but if you read the book, Wentworth is basically Frank Churchill with a highly patriotic day job. He’s flirty, affable, outgoing, and good-looking enough that even Sir Walter Elliot notices. You need an actor who checks those boxes while still conveying a certain mixture of bitterness and longing where Anne is concerned, and has a pleasant-sounding, expressive voice suitably for voiceover-ing Wentworth’s Letter. If I were casting the role today, I might go with Donal Finn from the Wheel of Time series, although I’ve found him a little off his game this season compared to last. Barney Harris, his predecessor as Mat Cauthon, would probably also work.

-The Crofts: one of several jolly, fairly happy couples in this story, along with the Harvilles and the elder Musgroves. They have a bicker-cute dynamic and need to be kind of weatherbeaten looking, with Sophie older than her brother Wentworth and the Admiral older than that.

-Anne Elliot: Considered as Anne Elliots, I think Amanda Root and Sally Hawkins both make pretty good Fanny Prices, which is to say that I enjoy them while thinking that they play the character as too mopey and downtrodden. The 1970s versions (1971 BBC and 1972 TVE) are probably closer to how Austen would have seen the character: a poised, practical woman who covers her regrets with a need to stay busy and be useful, and who has a keen awareness of her family’s social position, and a certain shame at how they’re mismanaging it. 1971 actress also conveys something of the character’s quiet sense of humor. I have no good ideas for casting.

–I personally see the character as capable of great kindness but also great snobbery (see for instance her sense of superiority regarding the Musgroves, which Austen appears to subtly mock). I think that we are supposed to see her acceptance of Wentworth’s naval friends and increasing indifference to her family’s demands as the breaking down of that snobbery. This is something that any new adaptation ought to highlight more than the previous versions have. Based on the clips I’ve seen, 2022 Persuasion is not wrong to portray Anne as patronizing and superior in attitude towards those she cannot respect; it is wrong in the vulgarity and anachronism with which it conveys that attitude, and it’s wrong in treating that attitude as a positive thing. Accordingly, I would marry Mrs. Clay off to Sir Walter, with Anne’s shrugging acceptance of the fact showing her growth in character. She no longer considers her father or his handling of his social status to be her problem.

–There’s a tendency among Austen’s more child-allergic fans to sweep Anne’s maternal instincts under the rug, and pretend that she and Wentworth will end up being childless like the Crofts. Listening to the early stages of the book makes me think this was not Austen’s intention. Anne is fond of her Musgrove nephews, finds an emotional outlet in looking after them, and they are said to be, 99% of the time, better behaved around her than around their parents or Musgrove grandparents. All this seems to be Austen’s way of signaling that this is the kind of woman who would be happier married to the right man, with children, than not. The one incident where the nephew climbs on her back is a perfect storm of her being distracted by looking after the other nephew, her being stressed by Wentworth’s presence and apparent irritation with her-Anne’s presence, and possibly her being stressed by Charles Hayter (Harriet Musgrove’s admirer) showing up and radiating resentment at Wentworth. Wentworth’s intervention is meant to underline that he is the right mate for her, and is also good father material.

-Sir Walter Elliot: I think the recent adaptations do him a disservice by making him seem overly ogreish and unpleasant in manner. He’s a good-looking man in his fifties who had at one time enough looks and charm to dazzle his future wife (now deceased). The late Lady Elliot is implied to have been a pleasant, sensible young woman whom Anne apparently resembles in looks and personality, to give you some idea of the kind of woman he could dazzle in his prime.

–I once saw someone online suggest Hugh Grant for the role of Sir Walter. That’s along the lines I’m thinking too: a rather dashing older fop lightly tossing off lines about what life at sea does to a man’s looks, laughing with his handsome, haughty eldest daughter about the inferiorities of their neighbors. He sins against Anne by taking her for granted, spending her inheritance, and shutting her out of the mean girls clique he and his daughter Elizabeth have going on. (Possibly also by negging on Anne’s looks in her hearing, but if so, he should do it, along with his other negging on people’s looks, in a droll, jokey way.) He sins against his tenants and his servants by taking them for granted as well, but he’s not a chronic sourpuss like Lady Tremaine from the Cinderella cartoon. Basically, he needs to be amusing enough in this hypothetical version that the audience is not dismayed by Mrs. Clay catching him.

-Elizabeth Elliot: the Bingley ladies’ sister from another mister. Good-looking, superficially pleasant, catty under the surface, not as charismatic as her father or as intelligent as Anne. Physical type more similar to the father than to the other two sisters. She is present for the reveal of her father’s elopement with Mrs. Clay, and is Not Happy.

-William Elliot: a good-looking man who’s amusing, intelligent, not overtly sleazy, and always has plausible things to say…but there’s a sense throughout most of the story that we’re not seeing the real him. He shows a quiet but savage anger when he brings news of Sir Walter’s elopement and reveals that he-William was trying to detach Mrs. Clay from Sir Walter but that she was just stringing him along to motivate Sir Walter.

-Lady Russell: I do not like her Sam I am, I do not like Lady Russell, with ham. (Or without ham, for that matter.) She needs to be smooth, gracious, plausible, and kind of annoyingly smug, like a softer, less selfish version of Judy Parfitt as Lady Catherine in the 1980 P&P. In flashbacks to the breaking of the engagement, she probably points out that Anne’s mother was just as infatuated with Anne’s father, and that ended up being an “unsatisfactory match.” But it is another point she makes, that a wife or a fiancee would be a liability for a rising young officer like Wentworth, which carries the day with Anne. I imagine Lady Russell being horrified by Sir Walter’s elopement, William’s stratagems regarding Mrs. Clay, and having a moment of severe chagrin when she learns of Anne’s and Wentworth’s re-engagement. Then she swallows her pride and is nice to Wentworth. I could see Rosamund Pike in the role.

-Mr. Shepherd: a shrewd, likable lawyer guy managing Sir Walter for Sir Walter’s own good. Cries out for Mark Williams to play him. Since I changed his daughter’s fate, we need a scene of him reacting to the news that Sir Walter is his son-in-law…or possibly him facilitating their elopement?

-Mrs. Clay: I think Anne is overly hard on this woman, who’s generally obsequiously pleasant to Anne and whose only real crime for most of the book is being more socially ambitious and better at kissing backsides than Anne is. She’s a moderately pretty woman, still of childbearing years, with irregular teeth, freckles, maybe auburn hair. Comical in her flattery, obviously calculating, but not malicious or spiteful. The triangle between her and the two Elliot men should be a subtext in their interactions, only made text if we see a flashback to her eloping with Sir Walter(1), or have a scene with them returning to Bath after their marriage.

-Mrs. Smith: Mrs. Clay’s more genteel, physically disadvantaged mirror image. She’s charming to Anne, but kind of overly butters her up, especially when she thinks there’s a chance Anne can marry William Elliot and help Mrs. Smith reclaim her lost property(1.5) Anne is upset at her for not telling the truth about William at first, but realizes that she-Anne is Not So Different from her sister Elizabeth in failing to see that her preferred companion is acting from self-interest. I think we do see Anne and Wentworth managing to do something for Mrs. Smith.

-Mary Musgrove, nee Elliot: an easy character to cast at an acting level because of her self-centered hypochondria, played for laughs. It’s a combination guaranteed to draw the attention of capable actresses at any casting call. However, I think there is sometimes a tendency to present her as homelier and more unpleasant than really makes sense. Mary’s husband is a former suitor of Anne’s that Mary “caught” on the rebound, which implies that she resembles Anne in looks and/or mannerisms, and is not without a certain charm in her less annoying moments. I’m imagining her behaviors as somewhat resembling a Regency version of Glynis Johns as Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins, only obsessed with her health instead of woman’s suffrage. Which is to say, sort of fluttery and ditzy.

–Her husband Charles is basically a younger, more laid-back edition of Sir John Middleton from S&S. Probably pretty handsome, just to underline how intense Anne’s love for Wentworth remains, that she could turn this guy down.

–They have two sons, the younger being two years old and named Walter (or as every reader thinks of him: “Climbs-On-Aunts”), although big and energetic for his age. So far as I can tell, name and age are unspecified for the older brother (known to every reader as “Collarbone-Out-Of-Joint”), but it sounds like he’s only a couple of years older than the brother (so four or five years old), and the whole not-naming him thing sounds like he’s probably yet another Charles, like his father and paternal grandfather. If he needs a different name for adaptation or fanfiction purposes, calling him Richard/Dick (after his deceased Musgrove uncle) is a possibility. I’ve talked before about how I see the rambunctious children in Jane Austen’s novels as a bunch of Regency Dennis the Menaces and Regency Kevin McAllisters, who should be more annoying to the grownup characters inside the story than to the readers/viewers, who I think are meant to be rather amused by them. The Musgrove nephews are, if anything, a more sympathetically portrayed set of rambunctious children than the ones in S&S or Mansfield Park. And their character failings very explicitly laid at their mother Mary Musgrove’s door, with a bit of blame to the father and paternal grandparents as well.

-Louisa and Harriet Musgrove: need to be similar physical types. They are good-looking, sweet, fun, giggly, and have good chemistry with their various love interests. We want shipping wars as the episodes air, with fans of Wentworth/Anne, Wentworth/Louisa, Wentworth/Harriet, Benwick/Anne, William Elliot/Anne, Benwick/Louisa, and Hayter/Harriet all butting heads. Louisa is the more headstrong one, but not grating or unpleasant. The audience watching her preparing to jump should feel the same sense of anxiety as someone watching a cute dog or cat in jeopardy, not thinking: “that pain in the neck is about to make trouble for all the characters I actually like.”

-The elder Musgroves: both nice people; the mother is overweight and sentimental about her useless dead son Richard; the father is some gaunt but affable figure along the lines of Charles Dance’s or Jason Isaacs’s less evil characters.

-Charles Hayter: Harriet’s sort-of boyfriend, briefly outshone by Wentworth. There’s a tendency to portray him as overly sulky and dour; I think he needs at least one cute scene with Harriet before Wentworth shows up, and to give off more of a kicked puppy vibe in the scenes where Wentworth is upstaging Hayter.

-Benwick: this is a somewhat comical Broody McBrooderson kind of guy. He’s good-looking enough to be a plausible suitor for Anne and Louisa, he’s intelligent, his emotions, however transient(2), are intense in the moment, but at the same time, there’s something a little absurd about him. We need to have a brief moment, before the incident at Lyme, where the Musgrove sisters manage to lighten his mood a little, and also to have a sense that although he and Anne get along well, they don’t exactly brighten each other’s outlooks that much. Tom Hiddleston is maybe slightly old for the part, but he could perhaps strike the right balance for Benwick. Cillian Murphy, the other hot property of similar physical type, is I think rather older still, and I’m not sure about his comedic timing.

-The Harvilles need to be warm, cozy, likable people, the husband a little dense at times (see his conversation with Anne which leads to the Letter) and if anything rather more prone to comically hyping the virtues of the dead Fanny Harville than Benwick is. (Not So Different from the elder Mrs. Musgrove.)

(1) I believe Gretna Green was only for people young enough to need parental consent to their marriage; I don’t know what the logistics of a hasty marriage between a widower of fifty-mumble and a widow of twenty/thirty-mumble would be in this setting.

(1.5) As with Sir Thomas in Mansfield Park, you are not actually required to believe that her West Indies property runs on slave labor, but you can certainly do so if you want. If so, the blame would fall more on William Elliot and the late Mr. Smith; women were seldom involved in such business decisions, especially when they didn’t live on premises, so to speak. If you would rather dodge the slavery question, we can either mention her planning to manumit any slaves, or give the property-in-limbo a different location.

(2) I mean, his fiancee’s apparently been dead a year, so they’re not *that* transient.