{"id":475289,"date":"2026-05-08T20:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T20:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/475289\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T20:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T20:32:10","slug":"the-other-bennet-sister-the-pride-and-prejudice-spinoff-is-the-cure-for-bridgerton-fatigue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/475289\/","title":{"rendered":"The Other Bennet Sister: The Pride and Prejudice spinoff is the cure for Bridgerton fatigue."},"content":{"rendered":"

In Jane Austen\u2019s Pride and Prejudice, the middle sister, Mary Bennet\u2014now the main character in the delightful, life-affirming BBC One miniseries The Other Bennet Sister that is newly streaming in the U.S. on BritBox\u2014barely registers, save as a source of additional embarrassment for her older sisters Jane and Elizabeth, already sorely tried by their marriage-fixated mother. The canonical Mary is a person who \u201cpiqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections,\u201d Austen writes, the \u201conly plain one in the family\u201d who compensates by \u201cworking hard for knowledge and accomplishments,\u201d a person with \u201cneither genius nor taste\u201d whose \u201cvanity\u201d had \u201cgiven her application\u201d but also \u201ca pedantic air and conceited manner.\u201d She speaks in a pompous way, as when she decides to attend a dance and says to her family: \u201cSociety has claims on us all; and I profess myself one of those who consider intervals of recreation and amusement as desirable for everybody.\u201d (Just say you\u2019ll go to the dance, girl!) In the wrap-up to the novel, Austen marries off the other four sisters\u2014beautiful Jane with Mr. Bingley, witty Lizzie with Mr. Darcy<\/a>, Lydia\u2019s shadow, Kitty, with an unnamed clergyman, flighty Lydia with the wastrel Wickham\u2014then quickly glosses over Mary\u2019s fate as Mrs. Bennet\u2019s spinster companion: \u201cAs she was no longer mortified by comparisons between her sisters\u2019 beauty and her own, it was suspected by her father that she submitted to the change without much reluctance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Janice Hadlow\u2019s 2020 bestselling novel The Other Bennet Sister<\/a>\u2014a rare work of Pride and Prejudice fanfiction, in an ever-growing library of such variations<\/a>, to contain almost nothing of readers\u2019 favorite couple, Lizzie and Darcy\u2014theorizes that Mary might have been deeply misunderstood. Mary, like the other sisters, might have found her mother absolutely awful, and might have dreaded becoming the \u201cplain but helpful\u201d daughter at a time when respectable \u201cspinsters\u201d had few other options. She might have hated floating between households as a barely welcome guest after her father\u2019s death and the surrender of the family home to their distant cousin, Mr. Collins. Hadlow asks whether a person constantly on the losing end of \u201ccomparisons between her sisters\u2019 beauty and her own\u201d might actually be more marked for life than passingly \u201cmortified,\u201d and whether the pedantic habits Mary developed in her search for distinction should, rather than annoying us, provoke our sympathy toward a girl floating without anchor between two solid sisterly dyads, Jane\/Lizzie and Kitty\/Lydia.<\/p>\n

Hadlow\u2019s novel, some readers felt, was almost too depressing\u2014Hadlow spends a third of it delving into the damage Mary\u2019s family does to her, and that can make for lonely and frustrating reading. The unexpectedly popular<\/a> new television adaptation, starring a near-perfect Ella Bruccoleri as Mary, solves this by compressing these earlier stretches of the novel, marrying the four sisters off early, so that we can get to the good stuff: the blooming of Mary, due in large part to the kindness of her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner (Richard Coyle and Indira Varma). Although it\u2019s downplayed in the show, in the novel Hadlow posits that these two relatives are freer of social convention in part because their money comes from trade, something that Mr. Gardiner\u2019s sister Mrs. Bennet sees as shameful. Living in London, the Gardiners are also less provincial than the denizens of Meryton, hosting soir\u00e9es where people play word games and indulge in raucous laughter. \u201cIn our house, no one is obliged to sparkle,\u201d Mrs. Gardiner reassures Mary; with the pressure off, Mary, inevitably, starts to sparkle.<\/p>\n

As the Bennets\u2019 housekeeper, Mrs. Hill (Lucy Briers, who played Mary<\/a> in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries, aka \u201cthe Colin Firth as Darcy\u201d one), suggests she might, Mary flourishes when she can see that her nuclear family is not the whole world. It\u2019s clear, in the few situations when Mary is forced back into proximity with her mother, how much her family dims her. We\u2019re compensated amply for the pain of watching this by the blossoming of a new, more authentic adult friendship between Lizzie (Poppy Gilbert) and Mary, and the fact that Mrs. Bennet, as played by Ruth Jones, exudes a very funny type of unlikability. The moment when Lizzie tells her mother that they will engage a paid companion named Susan so that Mary can accompany the Gardiners on a trip to the Lake District is meme-worthy<\/a>. \u201cAm I to be looked after by a SUSAN?\u201d Mrs. Bennet asks, in the highest of dudgeon, as even the awkward Mr. Collins makes a face.<\/p>\n

But the show won\u2019t work without a good Mary. Ella Bruccoleri is, of course, pretty<\/a>\u2014she\u2019s an actress. But the show does several things to emphasize her round eyes and undainty chin. Mary wears spectacles\u2014the bane of Mrs. Bennet, this is the device every movie or TV show uses to dim a pretty actress\u2019s light\u2014but the show also resists covering the blots of pink that sometimes arise on Bruccoleri\u2019s cheeks, suggesting rosacea or similar skin irritation. Bruccoleri does the rest, squidging up her eyes and mouth, walking in an ungainly way, delivering Mary\u2019s little bursts of pedantry with almost apologetic line readings, which make them even more annoying. In an early episode, Mary supports her mother in an argument, and her mother fusses at her anyway. \u201cI was agreeing with you!\u201d Mary says. \u201cIt\u2019s the way you say things,\u201d her mother snaps back.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Laura Miller
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    Two of the Gardiners\u2019 friends are the men who will form the story\u2019s love triangle, Mr. Hayward (D\u00f3nal Finn), a poetry-fancying lawyer, and Mr. Ryder (Laurie Davidson), a charismatic gadabout with some very Percy Shelley ideas<\/a> about marriage. This is a love story, and the chemistry between Bruccoleri and Finn and Bruccoleri and Davidson is helium-light. But this is not a show with sex in it\u2014the big, rewindable scenes between the two prospective couples do not involve touching. The show has been acclaimed as trad<\/a> for that reason, but who cares about that; what The Other Bennet Sister\u2019s successful execution shows is that a show like Bridgerton\u2019s sex scenes<\/a> can feel repetitive not because they\u2019re naughty or even historically inaccurate, but because when a viewer is hoping and expecting to see a couple smash, you start to risk the nonsexual interactions feeling like filler<\/a>. In The Other Bennet Sister, you have, instead, Hayward teaching Mary how to play graces<\/a>, Hayward and Mary outdoing one another dorkily mimicking bird calls<\/a>, or Mary and Ryder dissolving in delighted laughter on the dance floor. We\u2019re witnessing Mary\u2019s awakening, but not solely a sexual one\u2014though she does admit to enjoying the look of a nice forearm. \u201cI am so sorry that anyone has made you feel like a disappointment,\u201d one of these men tells Mary, and it feels like the sky has opened up.<\/p>\n

    Some Austen fans find this entire Mary rehab project to be modern-minded to the point of uselessness, because Mary, as written in Pride and Prejudice, is cruelly moral in her religiosity, not, as one such objector wrote on X<\/a>, \u201ca self-insert for introverts.\u201d Perhaps there is something to this critique; a less well-done show could feel like a craven play for relatability. (\u201cI realized after watching the show,\u201d said one fan on Reddit<\/a>, \u201cI identify as a Mary, though I\u2019d love to be Lizzie.\u201d) Luckily, The Other Bennet Sister is so breezy and full of heart, most viewers will fall for it right away. Who wouldn\u2019t want to watch a girl who grew up gray learn to be bright?<\/p>\n

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