Persuasion - Season 1 Episode 2 Part 2
Overview: Jane Austen's last novel provides the plot for this earlier Granada miniseries. Set in pre-Victorian England, this movie tells the story of Anne Elliot, who now having lost her "bloom" is re-united with the dashing Captain Frederick Wentworth whose advances she had refused seven years earlier. Now that he has gained both connections and fortune in the Napoleonic Wars, she regrets that her neighbor, the meddling Lady Russell persuaded her to refuse his proposal of marriage. Now as she watches him woo the young Louisa Musgrove, she suffers terribly while he appears to have forgotten entirely his earlier attraction to her. Manners and moires often thwart her strong desire to tell her true feelings, but his true emotions too, are masked by fear and the lasting pain of her rejection.
Comment
I watched this miniseries adaptation of the Jane Austen classic many years ago and liked it just fine, and found it to be entertaining when watching it again recently. The actors do a credible job and the writing seems true to the novel. The production does feel dated now, perhaps not aging quite as well as the content. The overall look of it not as vivid as the more recent version from 2007. It also feels a little restrained, not dramatic enough to jump off the screen and grab the viewer. But it is a product of its time and of the BBC’s treatments of Austen’s novels. I feel like I should watch the later version now to see if it is indeed more energetic as I remember it in comparison.