Gavin & Stacey and Call the Midwife star tease dark "shift" in the second half of The Other Bennet Sister

The first five episodes of The Other Bennet Sister are available to watch on BBC iPlayer now, with Jane Austen fans diving into this story of Mary Bennet's life outside of what we are told in Pride & Prejudice.

Unusually for a period drama, the series is made up of 10 half-hour episodes, with writer Sarah Quintrell having told The Radio Times Writers' Room that this immediately lightens the tone.

However, Mary star Ella Bruccoleri (Call the Midwife) and Mrs Bennet star Ruth Jones (Gavin & Stacey) have teased that fans should expect that to change slightly, with the series featuring a "darker" second half.

"For me, it really shifts in the second block," Bruccoleri said when asked about the show's tone, in an exclusive interview with Radio Times. "The tone really shifts. It feels darker, slightly. I think you’ve still got all the light, comedic, beautiful repartee, but then it feels a bit more meaty, a bit gristlier, I think."

Meanwhile, Jones added: “What I love though about Sarah's script and the way that it was all executed through Jen Sheridan's direction and the production is that it really moves along.

"I think when you know you've got to encapsulate these episodes within half an hour, you have to have pace, but you also don't want to lose any of the nuances of it.”

Bruccoleri then revealed that she was initially "worried about the 30 minute episodes", saying that she worried that "we've got to pack in a lot of story and beats within those episodes".

She continued: "I had skepticisms around it. I think it works. And weirdly, those latter episodes are still half an hour long, but you feel like you can sit in the emotion and the feelings a bit more. Obviously you're setting it up, aren't you, for the first few episodes, so the pace is a bit quicker.”

Jones added: "And the use of voice over, I think, is really important, where you really do feel then connected with it being Mary's story and Mary's perspective. I think that's really important.

"But I remember reading the sequence, it's a montage right early on in the first episode, where the family setup is explained, and they do it so economically and so beautifully.

"You have Mr And Mrs Bennet as this young couple, and then they have a baby, and it's a girl, and then they have another baby, and it's a girl and another girl and another girl and another girl. And that gives the audience that background, but in a really enjoyable, entertaining way. The comedy in there is superb."

Bruccoleri said that "there's loads of comedy packed into" the series, but that it "toes a line" and feels "like sort of tragicomedy for me".

The Other Bennet Sister episodes 1-5 are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer. Episodes 6-10 will arrive at 6am on Sunday 29 March.

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