It's Sunday, so that means telly night, and for today's Sunday Slump, I'm looking forward to watching Miss Austen Regrets (BBC1 8 pm).
This has already been screened in the US and there are some reviews and lots more about it here. I am hoping that it will be better than the frankly dreadful Becoming Jane (which I moaned and whined about here last year), but an acerbic review by Christina Patterson in the Independent and some very mixed reviews on the comprehensive and discerning Jane Austen Today blog leave me wondering what I shall make of it.
But, there's a huge mound of ironing to be done following a concerted attack on the laundry mountain this weekend. So, whether Miss Austen Regrets is execrable or thoroughly glorious, at least there won't be a creased-school-shirt crisis in the morning.
An appropriate moment at which to mention once again this witty range of Jane products.
3 comments:
I'm beginning to think that we can have too much of a good thing (ie Miss Austen); she'll soon be as ubiquitous on the box as Terry Wogan used to be. Does no-one at the Beeb have any imagination? What about all those other wonderful 19th (and 20th) century writers, whose works are just begging to be be dramatised. And some of those writers managed to have quite interesting lives too . . .
Just a thought. Still, I do hope it's better than initial reports suggest. It couldn't be worse than Becoming Jane, could it?
Now that the ironing is done, are you going to tell us what you made of 'Miss Austen Regrets'? I think 'Ms Austen' would have been a more fitting title. Fantastic scenery, excellent acting, good direction, pity about the script. I liked the links between the novels and her life, but Jane Austen at 40 getting tipsy and flirting with her niece's admirers?
Like D, I wish they would leave Jane Austen alone and give us something original to watch on Sunday evenings.
Oops, I *completely* forgot about the ironing!!!!! Thank you for reminding me. I shall set the alarm half an hour earlier than usual. I'd wondered why I was enjoying putting my feet up so much and I'd put it down to the wine!
I didn't mind the getting tipsy bit, nor the flirting bit, actually, because there's plenty of evidence that Jane indulged, mildly, in both.
But you're right - it didn't really add much, and I am left wondering, really, what the 'point' of it was. My response (as you will see) was to have a bit of a rant about simply getting back to enjoying her novels for what they are. There's so much in them that the the surfeit of adaptations, novelised 'sequels' (bleuch!) and now quasi-biographical films is, frankly, superfluous.
But on the telly front, look what happened when someone *did* decide to look beyond Austen and Dickens to fill the costume-drama quota - bloomin' LARKRISE! Arrggghhh!
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