Sanditon Series (ITV/Masterpiece)

To the Seaside

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So we’re sure most of our Gentle Readers have seen the beginnings of publicity for the upcoming series Sanditon, sort of an adaptation of Jane Austen’s last, unfinished work. So, first things first: the trailer!

We have previously expressed our opinion on this upcoming work: that it is not so much an adaptation of Jane Austen’s work, or even an adaptation of Jane Austen’s work with a fleshed-out ending, one story with a plot with a definite beginning and ending, but ITV/Masterpiece’s new Sunday-night series, using Jane Austen’s settings and characters but otherwise completely made up by Andrew Davies and company, meant to extend over several seasons.

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More Thoughts on the Sanditon Series

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We’ve been giving some more thought to the Sanditon series announced as in production by ITV/Masterpiece. We know some people are really excited about this, because they love Jane Austen and movies and Jane Austen movies. Our Gentle Readers may be surprised to learn that we really don’t enjoy being Ol’ Negative Mags*, and that we certainly don’t want to ruin anyone’s fun; but we really, really love the little bit of Sanditon that Jane Austen left us, and just want any screen presentation to be worthy of it. Pretty people in period costumes and a story that is kind of Austenish are not enough.

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As we expressed in our prior post, we have serious reservations about the fidelity of the series to the original fragment, based on the information gleaned from the Masterpiece website.

Upon further thought, however, perhaps fidelity is not the thing to be looking for. Perhaps adaptation itself is the wrong word.  Continue reading

New Adaptation of Sanditon for ITV and Masterpiece

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This is not a drill, Gentle Readers. This looks pretty official.

PBS Masterpiece and British broadcaster ITV have teamed up to bring Jane Austen’s unfinished final novel Sanditon to television.

There was previously talk of an adaptation of Marie Dobbs’ popular completion of Sanditon, which sadly never seemed to come to fruition, so this is generally exciting news. However, keep in mind the term “unfinished,” because…  Continue reading