So, I just watched the 2009 miniseries adaptation of Emma, starring Romola Garai and Johnny Lee Miller. In terms of overall execution, this is probably the best Jane Austen adaptation to come out of the 00s. The script is well-structured, and plays up the Miss Marple factor: the idea of a small, gossipy town with secrets going on beneath the surface. People are guessing incorrectly about who loves whom; people are meddling in each other’s affairs to disastrous effect. If there’s a failure on the writing side, it’s a tendency to paraphrase Jane Austen without improving on her. The pacing is good, and the visuals are generally strong. The supporting cast is mostly pretty solid.

However, the two lead performances range from mediocre to bad at any given moment.

Nobody with Romola Garai’s level of plastic surgery and lack of comedic timing should be playing a Jane Austen heroine.(1) She’s okay in some of the dramatic moments, but in any scene that requires her to smile, her collagen-filled lips just twist up into a sneer, and it looks awful.

Johnny Lee Miller is an actor I usually like. He was a pretty solid Edmund Bertram in the 1999 film version of Mansfield Park, for instance. He is very unflatteringly styled here. He looks tired, puffy-faced, and dissipated, and he just radiates not wanting to be there. He manages nonverbal moments of angst now and then, but in any scene that requires him to be angry, he sounds like he’s attempting a Cockney accent and a Donald Trump impersonation at the same time. The rest of the time, he sounds like Paul Lynde in Charlotte’s Web. The staging of the proposal scene at the end is very sweet, almost good enough to triumph over the weak lead performances, but it would have worked even better if Johnny Lee Miller didn’t look like he wanted to kill his agent.

The supporting male cast is a step up from Miller, particularly Blake Ritson as Mr. Elton, who is one of the best things about the show. He is good-looking enough to sell both Elton’s conceit and Harriet Smith’s attraction to him. This Elton is a self-dramatizing poseur who thinks of himself as an angsty romantic lead. It makes for a sharp contrast to the same actor’s sweet, naïve Edmund Bertram in the 2007 Mansfield Park, where Ritson was also one of the best things in the show. The woman playing Augusta Elton gives a subtler performance as this brass-plated witch than we usually see, but is very effective. She is also prettier than this character is usually cast, but a Mr. Elton this pretty wasn’t going to settle for anything less.

Regarding Frank Churchill, I am not wild about the actor used. He’s kind of a Temu Brad Pitt with whatever it is that makes Pitt attractive left out. He acts the part well, but is stuck with a script that doubles down unnecessarily on his character’s failings, constantly flirting with Emma and poor-mouthing Jane, even in situations where he doesn’t go that far in the book. There is room for a version of Frank who is friendly towards Emma because that’s just who he is generally, especially when he thinks Emma has found out about his secret engagement. There is room for a version of Frank where his comments on Jane’s appearance read as concern, if you know what you are looking at. This is not that version of Frank. The 2009 version plays up the scummy aspects of the character in a way that clashes with the story’s overall comparatively light tone.

On a positive note, we have a very sweet and elegant Jane Fairfax, maybe a little too sweet. When Olivia Williams played the character in the Kate Beckinsale version, Miss Fairfax came off as prickly and ill at ease. You suspected this isn’t straight-up pretentiousness, but you could see how Emma would misread Jane’s personality. By contrast, the actress in the 2009 version interprets Jane Fairfax as a nice but stressed-out lady who is simply minding her own business. The show does downplay Emma’s hostility towards her, with Emma being kind of annoyed Miss Bates for hyping her niece, but nice enough to Jane Fairfax to her face. Emma’s fantasies linking Jane with Jane’s friend’s fiance (Jane’s friend’s husband in the book) are played as naively romantic rather than spiteful and gossipy.

I liked the actor who plays Robert Martin, although we don’t really get enough of him, and to my mind he is honestly the most attractive actor in the piece after Ritson. An Emma where Robert Martin is the second-handsomest man on offer, handsomer than George Knightley and Frank Churchill, does not have its priorities straight. Harriet Smith comes off as a bit too sly and conniving in the later parts of the show, but she is excellent as the sweet, clueless idiot in the early parts. She is a very attractive woman, arguably more so than Romola Garai.

Jodhi May is a very sweet, likable Miss Taylor/Mrs. Weston. I really buy the friendship between her and Emma more readily than in some other versions, and she seems really invested in “shipping” their acquaintances in a way that makes me wonder if that’s where Emma got her matchmaking tendencies. The guy playing Mr. Weston is a poor man’s Ian Holm: same avuncular creepiness, only blander.

Miss Bates is probably the third worst casting choice in this adaptation, after Emma and Mr. Weston. She does not talk fast enough, nor is she funny enough. While she is passable in the angsty parts, she looks heavily Botoxed. Just a weird, weird choice. Michael Gambon as Mr. Woodhouse starts out somewhat badly in the first episode due to a stupid tendency to leave his mouth hanging open when he’s not talking. However, he improves in the later episodes and gives a fairly sympathetic take on the character, maybe a little too magistral, a little too dignified or too substantial or too something. Still, he’s humorous and you understand why Emma loves him, and that’s all I really ask for from a portrayal of Mr. Woodhouse.

As for John and Isabella Knightley, there is a lot of good emphasis on their relationship with their kids and, crucially, the romantic leads’ relationship with their nephews and nieces. That part is pretty well done. I particularly like this version of Isabella, though I’m not in love with the John Knightley portrayal. I think Guy Henry did a better job in the Kate Beckinsale version.

We get the now-obligatory scene involving the Austen Hero du jour and his hunting dog, which in this case looks like either a poodle or some other woolly-coated water retriever. Knightley plays fetch with the dog briefly, in a cute scene where Mrs. Weston and Emma are teasing him about Jane Fairfax.

The use of flashbacks is better than what these shows usually manage. They really enhance the quasi-mystery aspects of the plot. The costumes are good, and the locations are well-chosen. Highbury is the best version of the town ever. Hartfield is a very cozy, modest manor house with an elegant little garden. Donwell Abbey is suitably ancient and grand, but I don’t feel like we see enough of it.

Overall, it feels like a missed opportunity: a pretty solid, well-executed adaptation let down by the lead performances. But honestly, it ends on a pretty good note, and I enjoyed it in spite of its failings.

(1) Even the long suffering Anne Elliot and Elinor Dashwood have moments of dry humor, and I am increasingly convinced that Fanny Price is supposed to be a smarter Catherine Moreland: kind of flailing and adorkable in the same way.