The Other Bennet Sister is Ass

I knew I wasn't really the target audience for new cheesy BBC drama The Other Bennet Sister on account of my eternal hatred of the sillification of period dramas, but nevertheless I gave it a shot just to check it out, and to see Richard E. Grant doing his thing as Mr Bennet. The thing is, I've never been a fan of period dramas that veer towards the anachronistic. What I look for in them is a thorough and obvious interest in the details of the time period, and especially so for an extended Jane Austen adaptation, because the crux of her commentary rests in the details and particularities of the landed gentry of that time.

Don't cry girl, just start punching.

I would love, for example, to see some sort of supplemantary series like this that explores the thorny but very small mention of the Atlantic slave trade in Northanger Abbey. But to do that, of course, you couldn't make a super fluffy show like this one.

Pissed off.

I'm not necessarily a stickler for accuracy - I think there are some fun ways to explore period settings from a modern lens that might necessitate anachronistic romp - but I do find that in almost all cases, it tends to feel absent and empty, as if the modernising of a period piece is happening just for the sake of it - just to bring the characters closer to us and plop them unthinkingly and uninterestingly in our lap. Sure, let's strip out all the context that makes their story remotely interesting and let them say that they're on fleek or something. Whatever.

The Other Bennet Sister falls into just about all the traps of thoughtless modernisation. We focus in on Mary Bennet, the ugly nasty freak of the group (or so the show positions her), and immediately the level of cringe on display begins to seep uncomfortably into my pores. Where in the source material, the iconic and layered Pride and Prejudice, Mary is a complex and slightly shadowy figure - not just considered a less pretty sister, but haughty and stand-offish and out of touch with some of the things going in the household. She has been said to be somewhat representative of Jane Austen herself, but what makes her interesting is that she's not simply a maligned or nasty character, but a character who has her reasons for having developed a severe and judgmental personality. She fits into the dynamic of the Bennet sisters, between screaming, excitable Kitty and Lydia, and the more wry Jane and Elizabeth. Mary is caught between them, and so her sense of being above the other girls is borne of her particular sense of isolation in the family as a quieter and more prim personality.

A look of motherly repulsion.

In the show, this is flanderised beyond belief into a cartoon portrayal of Mary which makes her dazzlingly innocent and sweet, while her whole family stomp her into the ground. This is partly a decision made in pursuit of light comedy - this show is written very much as a cute, comedic extension to the Pride and Prejudice lore - but in doing so, it flattens out every character completely. Mary's sisters are snide and nasty about every little thing she does, and her mother constantly makes disgusted faces at her and throws a fit about the very concept of Mary wearing glasses (because "men wouldn't like it"). It's unbearable, it makes the whole endeavour super dull, and it renders all of the show's dramatic tension way too obvious and flimsy.

The first couple of episodes introduce us to, and skip past, the events of Pride and Prejudice, and from then on we follow Mary as she fucks off to become a governess. This is portrayed as a sort of girl power alternate path for her to follow after being straight up humiliated by having a crush on a guy, but we continue to focus on her meeting interchangable men who couldn't possibly be attracted to her because she's not very gorgeous. It is incredible how little I care at all about this plot. It's like if Ugly Betty had zero fun to it. There is way too much of Mary feeling sorry for herself and saying she's too uggo to get a husband.

Okay, if we're going to explore ugliness and the great social toll it takes on women in a society where they rely so totally on their marriage prospects, could we perhaps say something about that? Anything?

There was one thing I liked in the show, and it was seeing that Mary has armpit hair. It's tragic that armpit hair still feels kind of daring, but since it does still have that aura of stigma about it, it was nice to just see her raise her arms and show off the armpit bush. Hell yeah. But aside from that single moment, the show feels like it has no idea what it wants to say in regards to the weight of beauty. It would be so much more satisfying to see the subtleties of Mary's experience of being a less desirable woman, rather than a parade of over-the-top scenes of either people being super mean to her, or people being charmed and delighted by her because she likes books and can win trivia quizzes. 

Because as we all know, Jane Austen was trying to communicate that books trump looks, not that people have weird conflicts within themselves that butt up against others constantly in a society that demands rigidl, proper behaviour. Right?

I dunno. I just think this is a bit stinky.