Ruth Jones reveals what she told Gavin & Stacey icon Alison Steadman about the beloved Jane Austen role they now share

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

It feels as though time has stood still in this bucolic spot a few miles west of Cardiff, and it’s not just because of the country lanes, green fields and trees full of chirping birds, but because all around me there is bustling activity that would appear to belong to yesteryear.

Young ladies in crepe bonnets stand by as horsedrawn carriages wait outside a beautiful Georgian mansion, and the Bennet parents line up to wave off their newly married daughters one by one – all except Mary who, as readers of Pride and Prejudice will know, always seemed a lot happier with her books than the birds or bees and, as such, is the sister left alone at home – at least for now.

It is Mary’s story that takes centre stage in the adaptation of Janice Hadlow’s 2020 novel The Other Bennet Sister. Hadlow was previously a television executive, which included the role of BBC Two controller from 2008 to 2014 but, despite her experience at the other end of the TV production chain, she was very happy not to be charged with adapting her novel for the screen.

“It’s a very different type of storytelling,” she says. “It’s good to have some distance, I think.” Instead, screenwriter Sarah Quintrell’s clever script brings us familiar events from Austen’s original story – Jane’s engagement to Bingley, Lizzie’s initial problems with reluctant suitor Darcy – from a new perspective, and also makes us root for Mary (played by Ella Bruccoleri) as she strives to duck the zero-sum choice of what her friend Charlotte Lucas calls “marriage or misery” and chart her own course.

“Because Lizzie and Darcy are so dazzling throughout the book, you don’t really see some of the secondary characters clearly the first few times you read it,” says Hadlow some months later over a video call. “Mary is actually quite a minor character, but very striking – this awkward, pompous young woman who always says the wrong thing. But Austen explains that, as the only plain sister in a family of beauty, she used her learning, her rather dusty morality, to distinguish herself. We’re offered a psychological explanation of somebody who is often played for laughs.”

Hadlow references the famous scene from Pride and Prejudice where Mary sings, proudly but badly, at the piano until Mr Bennet saves her blushes and everyone else’s ears by telling her, “You have delighted us long enough.”

“I just felt immense pity for her,” says the author, “and I began wondering if I could give her a happier outcome than that provided in the original book.” All of Austen’s heroines go on a journey of self-knowledge as much as of romance. “Yes, I wondered, what would that look like for her? Plus, I wanted to write a book for all those who’ve ever had an awkward Mary Bennet moment, saying or doing the wrong thing, which accounts for pretty much all of us.”

For Hadlow, Austen’s books are also about the relationship between mothers and daughters, and she delights in the portrayal of Mrs Bennet by Ruth Jones. As the family matriarch determined to find good matches for her daughters, the Welsh actor revels in the comedy of it, as well as some plummy tones – “he owns a shop, with a bell” is one of her character’s most withering put-downs – but also finds room for sympathy with the lot of a woman at that time.

“The word narcissist is bandied around a lot these days, but I think she pretty much is one, and there was great potential for her to be extreme in all her reactions,” Jones starts. “But she has five daughters, all of whom must marry if they are to survive, so in that respect, she’s a lioness of a mother protecting them. She’s an estate agent with five properties to sell, and one of them will not budge. In her final conversation with Mary, we get a real insight into her thinking. So yes, she’s fun to play, hopefully fun to watch, but I do feel that there’s quite a bit more there.”

The same character was famously played in the BBC’s celebrated 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice by Alison Steadman, Jones’s co-star in Gavin and Stacey, and Jones enjoyed sharing her casting before it was publicly announced. “We were at an awards event, somewhere very noisy, and I whispered to her, ‘I’m going to play Mrs Bennet,’ and she was really excited for me,” remembers Jones. “I told her, ‘I think mine’s going to be very different from yours.’”

In Jones’s hands, Mrs Bennet’s manipulation of Mary is more apparent, as is her antipathy towards her husband. She muses: “They clearly had a passionate relationship in the early days, but that has dissipated and given way to unhidden animosity.”

Mary was played in that 1995 version by Lucy Briers, and she’s back in action today, playing loyal family servant Mrs Hill, a rare source of support for the isolated Mary. When we sit down on set between scenes, Briers, looking ever so like her father Richard, tells me she feels as though she’s in “some weird time machine, both here and back there. It feels like a beautiful completion of a circle.”

When she played Mary on screen 30 years ago, Briers felt protective towards the sister she considers the most like real-life Jane Austen. “I did a lot of research and there was a letter detailing how her family only let Jane play the piano when they weren’t at home. And, like Mary, she wasn’t regarded as a conventional beauty, but she carved her own way.” In The Other Bennet Sister, it is Mrs Hill who encourages Mary to go out into the world. “She’s her maternal influence in the absence of Mrs Bennet, who is more concerned with her other daughters. I love that link.”

For Briers, the reason so many readers, and also writers, constantly return to Austen is because, “they are universal love stories, the triumph of the person least likely to succeed.

It’s very pleasing, as most of us see ourselves as that person. And of course she has a brilliant, naughty wit.” Jones reveals she initially found Austen’s works “poncey and fluffy nonsense”, before she picked up Pride and Prejudice in her 30s and realised, “Her take on human behaviour is incredible, she was writing in the 18th century, and you could apply all she says to the present day.”

Hadlow is still reeling from the experience of seeing her novel come to life on screen. “There’s nothing like watching the first clip of these talented actors saying words I’ve written,” she says, before adding quickly, “There’s Austen in there, too, not just me.”

Last year marked the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Why do Hadlow, and so many others, still turn to her work? “Her ability to build psychological pictures and her handling of plot,” is the author’s take.

“She makes sure the right people come together at the right time in the knowledge they’re going to rescue one another, and make each other better. I think that’s true for Lizzie and Darcy, and in her other books, Mr Knightley and Emma, or Wentworth and Anne Elliot. No one writes a happy ending like she does.” Now, fingers crossed, Mary Bennet will finally get her own.

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