Note on Margaret Dashwood: in the book, she’s Marianne’s teenaged (but not “out”) sidekick and echo, sort of a Kitty Bennet analogue. She blabs two different secrets of her sisters (“his name begins with an F!” and “he took a lock of her hair!”), accompanies Marianne on the outing where she twists her ankle and meets Willoughby, keeps Mrs. Dashwood company after Christmas while Elinor and Marianne are in London, and by the time of Marianne’s marriage has reached an age for dancing and courting and providing fodder for the romantic speculations of Sir John Middleton and Mrs. Jennings. She is a very underdeveloped character in the book; nothing like the obnoxiously cute wittle moppets of S&S 1995, Kandukondein Kandukondein, or S&S 2008. People who whine about her being left out of the older TV versions are really just pining for the version Emma Thompson wrote for S&S 1995, and showing their ignorance of the novel in the process.

Some Jane Austen novels were popular enough to see tv adaptations very early on, which were not preserved for posterity: Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion. Some were so (comparatively) uninteresting to the TV/movie-viewing public that people only started adapting them in the 1980s (Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey). And then you have Sense and Sensibility, which was studiously ignored by the adaptors(1) until 1971, at the dawn of proper TV archiving, and then received a positive torrent of adaptations and modernizations that have continued at the rate of one or two a decade down to the present. Here are my thoughts on the ones I’m aware of. If I don’t say it’s a miniseries, assume it’s movie length (two hours ish) or tv movie length.

–Sense and Sensibility 1971: Objectively, there’s a lot wrong with this miniseries. Edward Ferrars (Robin Ellis from 1970s Poldark) is too handsome, and stammers inconsistently. Colonel Brandon’s twinge of rheumatism seems more like an old war injury affecting his whole neck and shoulders, which might be meant to make him sympathetic but mostly makes him look weird and awkward, especially since it’s never alluded to in dialogue, and you have to guess at why the actor is tilting his head to one side and holding his shoulders like that. Joanna David as Elinor Dashwood is the best Fanny Price (from Mansfield Park) ever: a sweet, kind blonde person with mild dark eyes, constantly hurting on the inside while trying to support other people. Ciaran Madden is the most melodramatic Marianne Dashwood ever. Willoughby (Clive Francis, also of 1970s Poldark) is a little too obviously in love with himself. Lucy Steele can’t act. Sir John Middleton sounds more like a tavernkeeper than a member of the rural gentry. The script misattributes a novel to Anne Radcliffe, and summarizes Brandon’s backstory in a really awkward way (basically, the wording makes it impossible for him to pine over his lost love without sounding like he has a thing for his ward, the lost love’s daughter. If you like the actor’s performance in other ways, you may be able to overlook it, but some people can’t). Some of the dresses have proper lacings, some have zippers, and a slightly yellowed shirt with an asymmetric frill shows up repeatedly on different men, and I find myself wondering if it’s this one, which would have given it nearly a twenty year career in Jane Austen adaptations.

–And yet, and yet, and yet. Patricia Routledge (Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances) is a wonderful Mrs. Jennings, the set dressing and costumes are not as cheap and tacky as the 1981 version, and the whole thing just has a very mellow, good-natured vibe with good chemistry among the actors. Madden is pretty annoying (like most Marianne portrayers) but captures the absurdity of Marianne better than any actress since, and the combination of her strong features and loud acting style playing against David’s more delicate features and quieter style captures the differences between the two characters better than any other version I’ve seen, except maybe Kandukondein. When the characters talk books, they talk a serious range of books, unlike the 1981 version which is very banal in this regard. The Edward-Elinor proposal scene is very sweet, and the wrapup of the Brandon-Marianne arc is honestly the most charming I’ve ever seen, even if it violates the book timeline considerably. I don’t have an absolute favorite “in period” adaptation of this novel, but this first TV version is consistently in the running, in spite of its age and creakiness.

–Weird genre crossover trivia: Richard Owen (Colonel Brandon) was married to and divorced from(2) Polly Adams (1967 Jane Bennet) and fathered Susannah Harker (1995 Jane Bennet). He also appeared in the horror film Vampire Circus. Ciaran Madden appeared in the werewolf movie the Beast Must Die, with Peter Cushing (lost 1952 Darcy),(3) and made a romance-heavy episode of the Agatha Christie Hour with another horror star, Ralph Bates. Joanna David appeared in a more paranormal episode of the Agatha Christie Hour, but is today probably best-known as Aunt Gardiner from Pride and Prejudice 1995. Milton Johns (John Dashwood) appeared in Empire Strikes Back as an Imperial officer working with Vader on the carbon freezing process.

–Sense and Sensibility 1981: On paper, there’s alot to be said for this miniseries. Irene Richard (1980 Charlotte Lucas) plays Elinor closest to my idea of her as a quietly snarky gal whose relatives and acquaintances are getting on her last nerve. Bosco Hogan as a meek, angsty, not-really-handsome Edward Ferrars and Robert Swann as a stodgy but quietly passionate Brandon are also pretty much what I envision the book characters to be. Chronically angry-on-screen Peter Woodward, son of chronically angry-on-screen Edward Woodward, brings his chronic onscreen anger to an unusually intense Willoughby, an interesting and different choice, though perhaps too obviously shady. Tracey Childs is the least annoying Marianne ever, mostly because she goes for quietly intense (imagine a fairly attractive woman doing an impression of Hammer Films era Oliver Reed) instead of LOUD. We get another excellent Mrs. Jennings, a rather better Sir John than last time, and a Lucy Steele who’s too old and plain for the role but plays it well. Has the funniest ever version of Lucy Steele’s secret getting out, and the most grounded version of Marianne falling ill at Cleveland. Marianne helping Edward find the courage to propose to Elinor is sweet. There’s also some decent location shooting. The trouble is that this version just feels miserable, with particularly ugly interiors and costumes, and actors who give individually good performances but somehow seem like they secretly hate each other’s guts and aren’t that good at hiding it. The script is also pretty stupid. It pretends that Marianne has never heard of FREAKING SHAKESPEARE AND FREAKING MILTON until Brandon patronizes her about them. It also has Edward basically bolt from Barton Cottage when Sir John mentions the upcoming visit of the Miss Steeles.

–Weird genre crossover trivia: Bosco Hogan has minor supporting roles in the genre films Zardoz, the 2004 King Arthur, and the 2018 version of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Robert Swann had small parts in the cult horror movies Mumsy Nanny Sonny and Girly, Creeping Flesh(4), the scifi series UFO, a TV version of Hamlet (look, there’s a ghost, okay? It’s totally genre!), Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, The Witches and the Grinnygog, and a ton of British mystery/cop shows. Peter Woodward had a recurring role on Babylon 5 and spinoffs, along with roles in the second National Treasure movie, Fringe, Charmed, Stargate Atlantis, and voicework in Megazone 23 Part III (dub), Dead Space: Aftermath, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and the Wacky Races reboot. His father is best know in the US for his roles in The Wicker Man, The Equalizer, and the George C. Scott Christmas Carol. Irene Richard, as previously stated, was also in Pride and Prejudice 1980.

–Sense and Sensibility 1995: I enjoyed this when it first came out, mostly because I loved the idea of “villainous” Alan Rickman turning out to be a romantic lead, and was very amused by Hugh Laurie as Mr. Palmer and some of the other supporting performers (Harriet Walter as Fanny Dashwood, for instance). At the time, I was willing to overlook: the blandly competent production design; Emma Thompson’s dreary anxiety as Elinor; Kate Winslet’s general obnoxiousness as Marianne; the cartoony, cringy supporting performances from Imelda Stanton, Robert Hardy(5) and Elizabeth Spriggs; and the most awkward, charmless and unfunny Hugh Grant performance I’ve ever seen. I’ve gotten a lot less patient with all of that over the years, to say nothing of Greg Wise’s ditzy Willoughby. The character is supposed to be a cultured man who’s maybe a bit insincere in his literary opinions because he wants to impress Marianne, not a good-looking dullard who’s barely capable of understanding the Shakespeare he quotes.

–Emma Thompson’s script on the other hand is genuinely brilliant: a superb distillation of a messy, complicated book into something that a contemporary audience could understand…with a runtime somewhat over two hours. People sometimes pick on some of its more melodramatic choices, but alot of that is on the director and producers; I think a more darkly humorous production could have gone somewhere very different with, for instance, the scene of Brandon finding the unconscious Marianne in the grounds at Cleveland. In a different world, new casts and new directors would just keep trying this script on for size every 15-20 years, with a few tweaks here and there (or maybe the occasional “…and zombies” mashup), and Emma Thompson would never have to work again thanks to the royalties.

–Weird genre crossover trivia: Rickman and Stanton went on to pretty important Harry Potter roles, Thompson, Hardy and Gemma Jones (Mrs. Dashwood) went onto smaller, stupider ones. Jones also played the Mrs. Bennet analogue in the Bridget Jones Diary movies. Hugh Grant played the Wickham analogue in the Bridget Jones movies, and a smattering of fantasy/horror roles ranging from Lair of the White Worm to D&D: Honor Among Thieves and the Paddington movies. Though better known for Jeeves and Wooster and House, Hugh Laurie also appeared in the Stuart Little movies, the first live action 101 Dalmatians, an episode of Randall and Hopkirk, and did a large assortment of voicework in children’s animated movies, mostly SF/F. Elizabeth Spriggs did a smattering of SF/F on British TV, most notably a couple episodes of Doctor Who. Greg Wise was in an episode of Tales from the Crypt and a tv film called House of Frankenstein 1997. Kate Winslet was in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and some of the Avatar movies. James Fleet (John Dashwood) went on to be Mr. Bennet in Death Comes to Pemberley and a supporting character in the Lady Susan adaptation Love and Friendship. Dame Harriet Walter (Fanny Dashwood) played Harriet Vane in the 1980s Peter Wimsey mysteries, and is the niece of horror actor Sir Christopher Lee and the former partner of Peter Blythe, a supporting actor in Frankenstein Created Woman.

–Kandukondein Kondukondein (2000): This is a fairly loose modern retelling of S&S set in contemporary Tamil Nadu (a state in southern India). As with many films made in India for a popular audience, there are several musical interludes. I think this was made by people more familiar with the 1995 film than with the book, but they managed to put their own spin on it, with Brandon aka Bala (Mammootty) as a PTSD-ridden veteran of the Indian intervention in Sri Lanka, Edward aka Manohar (Ajith Kumar) following his vocation as a filmmaker, and Willoughby aka Srikanth (Abbas) as a man running some kind of investment scam who seems to believe his own bs. Aishwarya Rai as Meenakshi is the most charismatic and charming Marianne ever, giving a far better performance here than as the Lizzie analogue in Bride and Prejudice. Tabu’s Elinor analogue is named Sowmya, and is a bit underwritten but her persona is at least a good fit for the character. I’ve seen Western fans of Indian movies whinge about the leading men not being handsome enough; this is as good a place as any to remind everyone that in the novel, Elinor and Marianne are stated to be more good-looking than average, but Edward and Brandon are, if anything, rather the reverse. This version’s modernization/transplant to a different culture allows the sisters to start out as ladies of the manor, who lose their home due to inheritance shenanigans (as in the book and period adaptations) but then use their culture and education to find jobs for themselves, with their romantic problems as more of a sideshow. The songs are brilliant, the videos for them are suitably surreal, and the whole thing just has a very warm, mellow vibe, and one of the most convincing sister bonds among all the adaptations.

–Weird genre crossover trivia: Aishwarya Rai was also in Bride and Prejudice, and made a Tamil sci-fi movie called Enthiran and a Hindi-language Back to the Future knockoff called Action Replayy. Her weirdest crossover moment was in the Roman/Arthurian themed adventure The Lost Legion, costarring Colin Firth (1995 Darcy) and Rupert Friend (2005 Wickham.) Mammootty appeared in Prachiyettan and the Saint, about a man who sees visions of St. Francis. I *think* Abbas might have made a ghost-themed movie at some point, but can’t seem to find it on his filmography right now. Tabu was in Life of Pi and the horror comedy Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2.

–Sense and Sensibility 2008: I never much cared for the languid, cottagecore aesthetic of P&P 2005, partly because it seemed like a poor fit for such a “light, bright, and sparkling,” not to mention energetic, story. S&S 2008 seems to me more successful in pulling off this type of thing, maybe because it’s a miniseries with more time to let the story breathe, maybe because the source novel has a grimmer sense of humor and a lot less “sparkle” than P&P. Or maybe because the main characters do, in fact, live in a cottage. It’s a good mood-piece, a little marred by opening with an oblique but somehow tawdry portrayal of an unseen man’s seduction of a very young woman – we will eventually realize that this couple is John Willoughby and Eliza Williams. The characterizations are solid, but too often feel like pleasanter reworkings of their 1995 counterparts, especially Dan Stevens as Edward Ferrars, Charity Wakefield as Marianne Dashwood, Janet McTeer as Mrs. Dashwood, and Lucy Boynton as Margaret Dashwood. Hattie Morahan as Elinor Dashwood and David Morrissey as Colonel Brandon were clearly cast because someone thought they would serve similar functions to Thompson and Rickman in 1995 (the angsty heroine and the mysterious pseudo-villain with a heart of gold) but they are more successful at doing their own thing than the actors I listed above. Dominic Cooper, who played a young, dashing womanizer in the first Captain America movie, should have been the best Willoughby ever, but instead comes off as too overtly shady. At least he comes off as fairly intelligent, which is not always a given with Willoughbys. Supporting cast is pretty solid, with superb takes on Fanny Dashwood and the Steele sisters, and a surprisingly likable Lady Middleton.

–The script makes some weird choices, notably an unfortunate horse-taming metaphor which Elinor applies to Brandon’s handling of Marianne. Arguably, the script also pushes the Willoughby/Marianne/Brandon triangle harder and farther than it should. And although Wakefield and Morrissey are individually pretty decent interpreters of their roles, with Morrissey in particular being a favorite of mine, they don’t work well as a couple. If you’re going to emphasize the great weight of Brandon’s years and life-experience by casting a tall, rich-voiced, heavy-featured man like Morrissey, you need a Marianne with more force of personality than Wakefield projects, something more like the conviction and charisma that Aishwarya Rai brings to the character in Kandukondein.

–Weird genre crossover trivia: Mark Williams (Sir John Middleton) is our token Harry Potter veteran. Cooper, as stated above, is our token MCU veteran. Damien Thomas (the apothecary who treats Marianne) is our token old school horror movie veteran, having been Count Karnstein in Twins of Evil with, you guessed it, Peter Cushing.(6) Morrissey is our token Walking Dead veteran, but also appeared in Doctor Who, the music crime drama Blackpool, and probably got his gig in S&S on the strength of his villainous performance in the 1997 version of Our Mutual Friend. Jean Marsh (Mrs. Ferrars) is best-known for Upstairs Downstairs but to me she always been Queen Bavmorda from Willow. Morahan was in two unconnected Sherlock Holmes movies (Mr. Holmes and Enola Holmes) and also played the Enchantress who curses Dan Stevens’s Beast in Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast. Wakefield had supporting roles in versions of Jane Eyre and Midsummer Night’s Dream, and also appeared in Doctor Who. Mark Gatiss (John Dashwood) is a writer/actor associated with Sherlock, Poirot, and assorted horror projects. McTeer did voiceover work for Malificent, appeared in the Hammer Films revival horror film Woman in Black with Daniel Radcliffe, and is apparently portraying Minerva MacGonagall in HBO’s Harry Potter reboot. I think the Devonshire cottage appeared in The Night Manager, but don’t quote me on that.

–Scents and Sensibility (2011): this is apparently Mormon-made, but not explicitly about Mormon people; it just takes place somewhere in the contemporary American Southwest, and deals with people who don’t cuss and whose love lives are generally portrayed in PG-rated terms, which honestly I found kind of refreshing. Like Kondukondein(7), it portrays two sisters trying to find jobs after the family fortune goes away, but with the added wrinkle that their dad was arrested in some kind of Enron type scandal, so they are basically unemployable in white-collar jobs under their own names. Ashley Williams is a charming Eleanor who takes a horrible gig as a janitor at a spa run by the Fanny Dashwood (8) and Lucy Steele analogues, only to fall for Edward, a lawyer who’s the brother of one of the owners, and the romantic target of the other. Marla Solokoff is a fairly pleasant if immature Marianne who makes lotions and perfumes from herbs and flowers (“Scents” and Sensibility, get it?). She lies about her name to get an office minion job and gradually falls for a sort of Darcy/Brandon hybrid from the marketing department. All of it is lightweight, good-natured fluff: boring in the wrong mood, pleasant in the right mood.

–The script does a good job knitting together the most important S&S players into a more modern storyline, but I felt like it missed a trick in its handling of the dad’s financial scandal. Willoughby is already Marianne’s boyfriend at the beginning in this retelling, seems to be involved with the dad’s business somehow, and Edward is a lawyer? The smart thing to do would be to be portray the dad as a comparative innocent set up by Willoughby to take the fall, and make Edward the one to clear him (mostly offscreen). Instead, nope, the dad’s just a wrong ‘un, and after being in denial for a good chunk of the movie, the sisters just randomly accept the fact partway through.

–Weird genre crossover trivia: Nick Zano (Brandon) was in Beverly Hills Chihuahua, and the horror movies Joy Ride 2 and Final Destination, along with a couple of DCU properties (Green Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow) and the tv series version of Minority Report. Brad Johnson (Edward) has Monsters of the UFO, High School Musical 3, Dragon Hunter, Vamp U, Orcs! and Dragonfyre. He also played the Knightley analogue in a contemporary-set P&P/Emma/S&S mashup called Austentatious. The male love interests in S&S *may* be two of the most consistently SF/Horror/Fantasy adjacent roles in the Jane Austen canon.

-I’ve only seen a few clips of From Prada to Nada (2011), which resets the story among contemporary Latinos in California. From what I can tell, it has a great title, and pretty good interactions among the leads, but the not-great sound design makes some of the clips a bit hard to follow and keeps me from just sitting down and renting it. Maybe someday…

–Weird genre crossover trivia: Camilla Belle (Elinor analogue) was in Law & Order: Organized Crime, Practical Magic, and Jurassic Park 2. Alexa Vega (Marianne analogue) was in the Spy Kids franchise. Nicholas D’Agosto (Edward) was in Final Destination 5 and the DCU series Gotham. Wilmer Valderrama (Brandon analogue) did a lot of animated voice work, of which Encanto and Onward are possibly the best-known, and he was also in the From Dusk Til Dawn tv series.

–Sense and Sensibility (2024): This is a costume drama romance by Hallmark, which is not a channel I have easy access to. It casts the Dashwood sisters, their mother, Marianne’s love interests, and Lucy Steele as black, while John Dashwood, his father Henry Dashwood, and the Ferrars siblings are white. I’ve only seen short clips and stills. All I can say personally is that the actors seem well-cast given the Bridgerton-like approach the makers chose, and the costumes are cute and more colorful than usual, maybe influenced by Emma 2020. There seems to be a riff on 1995’s concept of Marianne wandering in the rain. Someone on the production design team claimed to have dressed one of the sets with a portrait of the biracial General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. He was a pretty awesome dude, but more importantly for our purposes, he was on the opposite side of the Napoleonic Wars from Jane Austen, her family and her creations. Nobody in Regency England was going to have a portrait of General Dumas up, any more than any Briton in WWII was going to have a portrait of German Air Marshall Goering on display.(9) Anyway, the reviews tend to say that this is pretty standard Hallmark fare, only set in the Regency, so it should be cute and inoffensive. Maybe someday I will see it…

–Weird genre crossover trivia: Dan Jeannotte (Edward) is in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which might be the first Austen/Trek crossover casting. Akil Largie (Brandon) was in The Sandman series, and the Pennyworth series (about Batman’s butler). Bethany Antonia (Marianne) was in House of the Dragon. Deborah Ayorinde (Elinor) was in the Constantine, Sleepy Hollow and Luke Cage tv series. Victor Hugo (Willoughby) did motion capture for Gemini Man. Edward Bennett (Sir John Middleton) was also in Pennyworth, plus Father Brown, Bridgerton and a tv version of Hamlet. Victoria Ekanoye (Lucy Steele) was in the Worst Witch tv series and a horror movie called My Bloody Galentine, and also did voice work in the video game Baldur’s Gate III.

(1) I’ve seen claims that the Italian Pride and Prejudice, the oldest surviving miniseries adaptation of Jane Austen, might have been influenced by S&S, because it features a duel between rake and hero, a more aggressively angsty take on Darcy than the other surviving pre-1990s adaptations, and a more volatile Lizzie. I don’t think we can rule out the idea that the Italians did some extra homework before making that version, but it’s not necessary to explain the vague similarities of tone. The two novels do share a lot of tropes, and nudging P&P more towards middle class Italian tastes would I think tend to make it more melodramatic, and therefore closer to S&S, even if the makers were not familiar with Austen’s less famous novels.

(2) Owen seems to have not remarried after that, possibly suggesting that he was not the one to initiate the divorce.

(3) If I had a nickel for every time a once/future Jane Austen veteran made a horror movie with Peter Cushing that involved werecreatures, I would have about $0.20. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s funny that it happened four times: Barbara Shelley (1980 Aunt Gardiner) in The Gorgon, Donald Sutherland (2005 Mr. Bennet) in Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, David Rintoul (1980 Darcy) in Legend of the Werewolf, and the aforementioned Beast Must Die with Ciaran Madden.

(4) no interaction with fellow Austen veteran Cushing, also no werecreatures.

(5) These two actors literally gave subtler performances in the Harry Potter franchise than they do here. What does that tell you?

(6) They do interact, but no werecreatures. Twins of Evil is a vampire movie.

(7) I didn’t notice anything that looked like direct references to other S&S adaptations, beyond casting the Edward and Brandon characters to look like younger, prettier versions of Dan Stevens and David Morrissey, so I don’t know if this is a direct riff on the Tamil film or just solving a similar modernization problem in a similar way.

(8) here appearing only as a sister of the Edward analogue, not an in-law of the Dashwoods.

(9) No, Napoleon wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the Austrian paperhanger, but the Limeys are always convinced that whoever they’re fighting right now is Literally Hitler. So far, they’ve only been right once.