‘The Other Bennet Sister’ Tells the Story ‘Pride & Prejudice’ Left Out

“What can you do if you’re the odd one out? Is it possible you’ll ever find a way to fit in?” So says the instantly lovable Miss Mary Bennet about her predicament in the premiere of Sarah Quintrell’s engaging and delightful The Other Bennet Sister. It’s adapted from a 2020 hit novel by Janice Hadlow about the neglected and bespectacled sister in Jane Austen‘s 19th-Century classic Pride and Prejudice.

As we’ve learned from P&P‘s myriad adaptations, in Regency-era England, the only currency a woman has is her looks. Early in this 10-part series, Mary, sensitively and smartly played by Ella Bruccoleri in her first leading role — she was mousy-turned-mighty Sister Frances in Call the Midwife and an insecure debutante in Bridgerton — is not considered beautiful enough to get a life. What’s worse, she’s told her options are “marriage or misery.”

Mary’s plainness draws the ire of her unhappily married mother, the vain Mrs. Bennet (Ruth Jones), whose unending cruelty to Mary we’d now call emotional abuse. The matriarch is desperate to marry off her daughters so they won’t be destitute. Because that’s a simpler task with her four pretty sisters, Mary becomes isolated from her siblings.

“No one asks her what she wants out of life, so she has to figure it out for herself and stand on her own two feet,” Bruccoleri tells TV Guide Magazine while filming at one of the series’ many gorgeous shooting locations, a massive English estate. It stands in for Pemberley, the home to Mary’s sister Lizzie and Mr. Darcy (Victor Pilard), main characters in P&P but minor in this fresh retelling. Bruccoleri is shooting a scene from the sixth episode, an elegant family dinner where Mary’s friend, the handsome and charming Lord Byron-esque Mr. William Ryder (Laurie Davidson), is flirting with her, to the surprise of her family.

“Mary is unlike anyone else he’s ever met,” Davidson explains. “She doesn’t fall all over him when they first meet. She doesn’t lean into the role of looking for a husband that most of the young women he meets do.”

Mary’s reshaping into a confident, independent woman begins in the third episode, when she’s sent to London as a governess. The children’s caring, sophisticated mother, Mrs. Gardiner (Indira Varma), Mary’s aunt, helps her blossom. “The main message of the show is the transformative power of kindness,” Bruccoleri says.

In a London of flowery parks and candlelit parties, Mary takes her first shaky steps. She learns the joys of both intellectual banter and parlor games (Bruccoleri’s firsts were riding a horse, Regency dances, calligraphy, and piano) and meets sweet Mr. Tom Hayward (Dónal Finn), a humble lawyer and poetry lover who introduces her to Wordsworth’s works, beautifully interlaced throughout the series.

He’s an acquaintance of Ryder, and a love triangle develops. Of the result, Bruccoleri will only say, “As Ella, I would pick Mr. Hayward, but I don’t know if that’s because the idea of Mr. Ryder scares and intimidates me. He’s got such a zest for life; Mr. Hayward’s steady.”

In this series, it’s not so much which man Mary will choose; it’s that she has already chosen herself. Bruccoleri shares, “She develops an understanding of what she wants and what’s going to make her happy — and the bravery to ask for it.” There are, after all, far more choices than marriage or misery.

Read on for details on the series’ characters.

The Other Bennet Sister, May 6, BritBox