Hallmark’s Old-School ‘Sense and Sensibility’ Makes Perfect Sense for 2024 (VIDEO)
Hallmark‘s Loveuary salute to the works of Jane Austen continues this week with what may be one of the network’s biggest swings: a straight-forward, PBS-caliber retelling of Sense and Sensibility. It’s not a cheeky update about a big-city exec looking for love on the countryside. There are no Tyler Hynes cameos. No inside jokes. Just the displaced Dashwood siblings surrounded by high-end production values, top-tier period costumes and hair, stunning locations and a clear adoration for that Regency Era energy.
In fact, the only new here is that the cast is primarily Black. And this long-overdue approach to reimagining Austen’s 1811 tale was “the perfect solution” for Hallmark Media’s SVP of Development, Toni Judkins when she set out to define Hallmark Channel’s Mahogany brand.
Hallmark Media
“When they announced that the Mahogany initiative was going to come to fruition, I had a little window where I was able to visualize in my wildest dreams what I wanted to create,” she states. “And within that window, I brought Sense & Sensibility to the floor, I put it into development and got a script. I felt that this was the perfect project. One, everyone loves Jane Austen. Two, Hallmark is ‘Where Love Happens’…so this would be safe, it would be familiar, it would be disruptive and it would be noisy.”
It’s also a lovefest as much behind the scenes as it is on screen. When Judkins and the S&S crew gathered at the Television Critics Association press event in Pasadena, the all-Black, all-female “A-team,” as executive producer Tia A. Smith puts it, couldn’t contain their joy— both at working with one another and on a project that means so much to them and Black viewers. Watch the video interview above.
Hallmark Media
“It was an honor,” raves Smith. “For me, it was about making sure it was authentic…and that it would be exciting to see a person of color have these tones of being vulnerable and being strong. That voice is needed, that visual and that representation is needed.” Helping amplify that voice with as much legitimacy as possible was historical fiction author and Regency Era-consultant Vanessa Riley, as well as costume designer (and Project Runway icon) Kara Saun and Beyonce‘s very own hairstylist, the inimitable Kim Kimble. The combined superpowers of this collective—Riley’s tireless research! The wigs Kimble created! Saun’s sewing costumes right onto the actors!—has resulted in not just a period-authentic, aesthetically sumptuous film, but also an unforgettable on-set experience for Deborah Ayorinde, who stars as eldest Dashwood daughter Elinor.
As any Black actor will tell you, there remains a lack of hair and makeup artists working in film and television who know how to work with Black skin and hair. “Obviously, people who look like me have gone underserved in the industry for far too long,” she agrees, heaving a huge sigh of relief that it wasn’t the case on S&S. “To be able to focus on my job and not worry about things that are not my job? That felt, for me, like, “OK, this is how it’s supposed to be.’ And hopefully that becomes the norm.”
Spoken like the forward-thinking kind of lady Austen would have loved.
Sense and Sensibility, Move Premiere, Saturday, February 24, 8/7c, Hallmark Channel
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When has Hallmark ever made just ONE white movie to that diverse ratio you just listed? More like 90 movies with white leads and sprinkle a black movie once a season, an asian and spanish movie once every few years. And an Arab movie? Maybe when pigs fly. One cast of black actors in a great movie and you feel like "our shows" are threatened. Some of us are proud to live in a melting pot but you can't tell by watching "our shows" you would think we look like Iceland by watching most of what they make.
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I LOVED this one! It was my favorite movie of the month and there was some really good ones. I'm not black, but I still wish they had more than ONE black movie for African American History month! Stellar adaptation and while it reminded me of Bridgerton, it still felt very true to Hallmark. More like this please!
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That's not what plagiarism means.
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Look it up, that's exactly what it means.
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In fact, it is not. Have the screenwriter and Hallmark at any point passed the script off as an original work, or described it as anything other than an Austen adaptation? No, they have not. They have called it what it is, a new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, from the start. The fact that you don't approve of it doesn't change what it is, or the fact that all credit due has been given to Jane Austen. There is no plagiarism.
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Oh, I see. Racism. Dated, too ("oriental"? What year do you think this is?).
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Rewriting history is very Hitler-esque.
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You are really going to incredible lengths to justify your racism. No one is going to force you to watch the scary, scary Hallmark movie.
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Nope. Pre-colonization, sub-Saharan Africa had no written language, math, medicine, science etc.. To place them in high society in Regency England is preposterous, and misleading.
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Ohhhhh kay if that's the level of ignorance we're dealing with here, it's too big for me to tackle in a comment box.That's starting from scratch. But no, that isn't correct. It's really... kind of sad that your education has been so lacking. Have a nice day.
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Anyone who owns a pedigreed dog is racist. What's your point? I don'y watch anything with black/white couples.
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Not only is that inaccurate on the whole- you might remember that Great Britain was a colonial power, and plenty of people of African and Asian heritage were enfolded into English society without being given the option of refusing- it's inaccurate with regard to the class focused on in Georgian/ Regency romances, the landed gentry. Google Dido Belle if you haven't heard of her. It's not even accurate for Jane Austen specifically. Sanditon is sadly unfinished, so we don't know what Austen intended for Miss Lambe, a mixed-race heiress, but we do know that her writings were a mirror of her society. Miss Lambe is a reflection of something Jane knew.
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Asians and North Africans, yes, but not sub-Saharan blacks.
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Again, untrue. The Navy in particular, and port cities by extension, were home with a number of people of African descent, both from the continent itself and by way of the Caribbean, where the UK had extensive colonial holdings. Nelson's own flagship HMS Victory listed one African and 9 West Indian sailors on the muster at Trafalgar.
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That wouldn't place them in Regency ballrooms.
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Depends on the ballroom. Dido Belle may be our singular example of a black aristocrat of the era (that we know of, historical survival being what it is), but a sufficiently successful member of the merchant classes would be welcomed at some balls. Not the inner circles of the ton perhaps, but someone like Ignatius Sancho, who had money, owned enough property to vote, and mingled with cultured and artistic society, could have access.
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Again, adaptation is not cannibalization. Nor is it new. Adaptations are as old as media. Some are good, some aren't, like any other work.
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How is a new adaptation cannibalizing? Adaptations are standard and common. Nothing about this is different than PBS doing another version.
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Because the social mores of Jane Austen's time are not compatible in any way with modern times.
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That isn't true, but even if it were, it wouldn't be relevant. Works of the past have much to offer current audiences, even if our worlds differ. Or are you saying they should never adapt any work older than the last ten years or so? No Austen, no Brontes, no Alcott? No Shakespeare? Ever again?
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