NOW ENTERTAINMENT May 400- 10, 2025 Month - 00, 2023
Your Weekly TV Entertainment Brought To You By Olean Times Herald & The Bradford Era
Keeley Hawes (“Line of Duty”) stars as author Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra in “Miss Austen,” premiering on Masterpiece on PBS Sunday, May 4. Rose Leslie, Keeley Hawes, Mirren Mack and Jessica Hynes star in “Miss Austen”
Cover Story The other ‘Miss Austen’: Miniseries focuses on love and loathe of literary sisters By Dana Simpson In the literary world, the name Austen typically invokes images of women in billowing attire atop a breezy English cliff or traversing a John Constable-worthy pastoral landscape with book in hand, perhaps unwilling to — but about to — meet her true love. From 1811’s “Sense and Sensibility” to 1817’s “Persuasion,” author Jane Austen wrote some of the English language’s best and most recognized novels of all time — but she also completed plenty of unpublished works, perhaps most famously a collection of letters fated to burn at the hand of her elder sister, Cassandra. In the BBC series “Miss Austen,” coming to Masterpiece on PBS Sunday, May 4, showrunner and director Aisling Walsh (“Maudie,” 2016) pairs with screenwriter Andrea Gibb (“Call the Midwife”) for a dramatic retelling of author Gill Hornby’s third novel, also called “Miss Aus-
ten,” which explores the love, frustration and competition between the Austen sisters. The four-part series, first released in the U.K. in February of this year, stars Keeley Hawes (“Line of Duty”) as Cassandra Austen, with Synnove Karlsen (“Last Night in Soho,” 2021) and Patsy Ferran (“God’s Own Country,” 2017) portraying young Cassy and Jane Austen, respectively. To whom the title of “Miss Austen” applies, however, is left to the viewers’ discretion (the remaining six Austen siblings are male), but author Hornby’s intentions are clear: Cassandra is the heroine of this particular tale. According to the PBS Masterpiece press description, “’Miss Austen’ takes a historic literary mystery — the notorious burning of Jane Austen’s letters by her sister Cassandra — and reimagines it as a fascinating, witty and heartbreaking story of sisterly love, while creating in Cassandra a character as captivating as any Austen heroine.
“Based on Gill Hornby’s bestselling novel,” the explanation continues, “this period drama brings a fresh and intimate perspective to the Austen sisters’ lives — their joys, heartaches, and the passions that would shape Jane’s iconic novels.” While Hornby’s novel debuted in 2020, the series was adapted for a 2025 release as a special way of marking the year Jane Austen would have turned 250 years old. But while Jane is, of course, a huge part of the reason Hornby began writing, the true heroine of “Miss Austen” is Cassandra, Jane’s oft-overlooked older sister. Ahead of the release of “Miss Austen” on BBC One, Hornby was interviewed by The Guardian, noting, “I always feel that we who like Jane’s novels should be on our knees in gratitude for all of the good Cassandra did. Jane was a fragile person and fragile people need their wingman, and that is who [Cassandra] was.
“I’m haunted by women in history who had their destinies and then had to live on their wits when things went wrong,” Hornby stated later in the interview. And that wit — as great writing and acting would have it — is one of the Austen sisters’ many personality traits that is masterfully captured in the BBC miniseries. Boasting a sizable and well-respected cast as the Austen family and various friends and neighbors, “Miss Austen” stars Alfred Enoch (“How to Get Away with Murder”), Liv Hill (“The Little Stranger,” 2018), Jessica Hynes (“The Royle Family”), Rose Leslie (“Game of Thrones”), Phyllis Logan (“Downton Abbey”), Max Irons (“The Wife,” 2017), Mirren Mack (“The Doll Factory”), Kevin McNally (“Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl,” 2003), Clare Foster (“The Ex-Wife”), Carys Bowkett (“The Suspect”), Calam Lynch (“Sweetpea”) and rising talent Ruby Richardson (“The Crown”).