‘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.

Read on for details on the series’ characters.

The Other Bennet Sister, May 6, BritBox