The Other Bennet Sister centres on Mary Bennet for better and worse

The Other Bennet Sister, the BBC adaptation of Janice Hadlow’s novel of the same name, retells and expands upon the events of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice through the narrow perspective of Mary Bennet (Ella Bruccoleri).

She is the cloistered and bookish middle sister of the Bennet family; a serial refuser to join in. "I prefer facts to whimsy," she says with an inflexibility she maintains throughout much of the series, even as the Bingleys move into Netherfield and throw a ball that will introduce Elizabeth (Poppy Gilbert) to Mr Darcy (Victor Pilard).

When, however, Mary threatens to open up at Netherfield, Mrs Bennet cruelly admonishes her. She sees little value in her "plain" daughter – cemented by costuming Bruccoleri in drab dresses and spectacles – and is keen she does nothing to impede her sisters; sisters with real marriage prospects.

It’s a cruelty that defines The Other Bennet Sister, framing Mary as a victim of Longbourn, her family, and particularly her mother.

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It’s a defensible framework; one that lends itself to a modern audience who might have a different definition of family to that of Austen. A combination of excellent period costuming and production design, with casting that brings a refreshing number of regional voices into an adaptation in which we might otherwise expect to hear received pronunciation, should combine into an accessible period drama.

But while Mary taking on her father’s tone as she proclaims her sisters are 'silly girls' makes sense, The Other Bennet Sister chooses to move Pride and Prejudice into a stereotypical high school tone in which Mary becomes a misunderstood intellectual who is bitter at anyone having more fun than her. This is taken to the extent that she becomes cruel to anyone she deems foolish – which is everyone.

Fools are far from unusual in Austen. Indeed, Mary is arguably the most sympathetic fool of them all. An obnoxious and shallow girl in Pride and Prejudice, she recites what she reads without interrogation to the chagrin of her family. But she is also the middle child in a large family, neither possessed of the beauty that marks Bennet women nor the wit that makes Elizabeth so compelling.

Her only other frame of reference is her father, to whom she regularly appeals for intellectual recognition. All of which he ignores.

Capturing Mary’s character and making it sympathetic is not an easy task and The Other Bennet Sister manages to capture a relatable pressure in Mary’s familial position. Yet The Other Bennet Sister, while insisting that Pride and Prejudice leaves Mary underdeveloped, offers her few dimensions beyond what Austen originally laid down.

Even as the series grapples with found family within Austen’s framework, Mary’s growth is so glacial that she never becomes compelling (a curiosity, given how convincing Bruccoleri is as a lead). She remains pedantic and recalcitrant throughout. Instead, The Other Bennet Sister forces everyone around her into a cartoonishly bad light in the hope it might make Mary appear more sympathetic by comparison.

Mrs. Bennet is a victim of that approach, here fashioned into an abusive mother marrying her daughters off to maintain a fragile sense of status. Her sisters, meanwhile, are rendered as high school mean girls who she is correct to judge for their fondness for ribbon, dresses, and the soldiers of Mertyon.

Worse is saved for Charlotte Lucas (Anna Fenton-Garvey). Practical about her prospects in a way Elizabeth is not, Charlotte takes up with Mr. Collins (here, Ryan Sampson) in Pride and Prejudice. Rather than a relatable foil for Mary, The Other Bennet Sister frames Charlotte’s marriage as a conniving theft not just of a potential match for Mary, but also of Longbourn.

Conversely, Mr. Bennet (Richard E. Grant) is an obvious conduit for sympathy towards Mary given his passive disinterest in his daughters outside Elizabeth. The Other Bennet Sister, however, suggests he does regard Mary as an equal, her recalcitrance as justified, and might even say so were it not for the abusive control Mrs. Bennet exerts. Mr. Bennet too often escapes criticism and The Other Bennet Sister has little interest in changing that.

Instead, it unfurls a pattern of tired stereotypes for its women while absolving its men. A pattern that follows Mary to London. Staying with the Gardiners (Richard Coyle and Indira Varma) finally removes her from comparisons with her sisters. At one of their parties, Mary befriends Ann Baxter (Varada Sethu), but when she reveals her engagement to Tom Hayward (Dónal Finn), Mary begins to regard her with the same bitter envy she reserves for all the women in her life. The series never really interrogates that Hayward exhibits overt interest in Mary despite his engagement.

A generous reading may be that we are simply seeing through Mary’s eyes and, by extension, her mother’s; that the intense jealousy she feels is a reflection of how threatened Mrs Bennet feels by women who might interrupt her daughters’ marriage prospects and we're observing a repressed Mary struggling to unlearn those behaviours. If that is the case, The Other Bennet Sister never communicates that in an adequate, or compelling, way.

Instead, trying to bring everyone down to the level of Mary’s caustic personality backfires. It only makes Ann more sympathetic, along with Charlotte and, ironically, Elizabeth – Gilbert’s performance suggests she deserves a genuine stab at Austen’s heroine. Indeed, there’s no fault in any performance in The Other Bennet Sister. Brucolleri similarly suggests she’d make a better Elizabeth while enduring dulling material. Sethu and Finn are bright spots in Mary’s London sojourn. Unfortunately, for an excellent cast, there’s little substantive to work with.

The result is an uneven expansion of Pride and Prejudice in which excellent performances and production never coalesce into a reason for being. Mary remains an underexplored and, ultimately, uncompelling protagonist in a retooling that, ironically for its subject, feels like a shallow misunderstanding of Pride and Prejudice.

The Other Bennet Sister premieres on BBC One and iPlayer on Sunday 15 March 2026.

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