I watched it again just to make sure I’d given it a fair chance. Pity me.

I hated the way his character was explained away at the end. He was charming, elegant and full of charisma throughout the production and suddenly a character rushes up to Anne and calls him rotten. Ann believes her immediately without question! and then rushes about like an idiot trying to find the bland and boring Wentworth. Penry Jones had absolutely no screen presence.

Anne’s character never developed. It was impossible to like her and the actresses mouth gaped open like a guppy fish the whole time. Harry Hill’s humerous swipe at the final kiss was well deserved.

There is no conspiracy; Mr. Elliot hears the gossip about Mrs. Clay living in the Elliot household and everyone’s assumption that she will try to marry Sir Walter, and he wants to keep that from happening. She was still young, and if she married Sir Walter and bore him a son, Mr. Elliot would not inherit Kellynch. From the novel:

The news of his cousins Anne’s engagement burst on Mr. Elliot most unexpectedly. It deranged his best plan of domestic happiness, his best hope of keeping Sir Walter single by the watchfulness which a son-in-law’s rights would have given. But, though discomfited and disappointed, he could still do something for his own interest and his own enjoyment. He soon quitted Bath; and on Mrs. Clay’s quitting it soon afterwards, and being next heard of as established under his protection in London, it was evident how double a game he had been playing, and how determined he was to save himself from being cut out by one artful woman, at least.

Mrs. Clay’s affections had overpowered her interest, and she had sacrificed, for the young man’s sake, the possibility of scheming longer for Sir Walter. She has abilities, however, as well as affections; and it is now a doubtful point whether his cunning, or hers, may finally carry the day; whether, after preventing her from being the wife of Sir Walter, he may not be wheedled and caressed at last into making her the wife of Sir William.

He really did like Anne and wanted to marry her; the keeping-an-eye-on-Sir-Walter bit was gravy. Here’s another bit, from Mrs Smith’s reveal of Mr. Elliot’s perfidy:

Mrs. Wallis has an amusing idea, as nurse tells me, that it is to be put into the marriage articles when you and Mr. Elliot marry, that your father is not to marry Mrs. Clay. A scheme, worthy of Mrs. Wallis’s understanding, by all accounts; but my sensible nurse Rooke sees the absurdity of it. ‘Why, to be sure, ma’am,’ said she, ‘it would not prevent his marrying anybody else.’

P.S. I always thought the Admiral was being rowed out to his flagship after hearing from, say, the port admiral that the war is over…

I beg to differ. Persuasion is romantic and sexy on its own. It doesn’t need the Dirty Old Man’s “special touch.”

And I wholeheartedly agree with you regarding Charles Musgrove, especially in the last scene. A superlative twit.

I do not even want to think on the Letter, or the (absence of the) “debate” between Anne and Harville before it. It’s like… never mind. I feel my blood pressure rising again.