Mansfield Park is a British six-part television drama serial based on Jane Austen's 1814 novel of the same name. Produced by the BBC and adapted by Kenneth Taylor, it stars Sylvestra Le Touzel as Fanny Price, who is sent to live with her wealthy relatives, the Bertrams, where she is treated poorly by most except her cousin Edmund. Her life is complicated by the arrival of the worldly Mary and Henry Crawford.
Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy relatives, the Bertrams, where she is treated poorly by most except her cousin Edmund. Her life is complicated by the arrival of the worldly Mary and Henry Crawford.
Episode 1. Episode One
1983-11-06 · 50 min
10-year-old Fanny Price is shipped from her large and impoverished family to live with wealthier relatives, where she's raised as a second-class citizen.
Episode 2. Episode Two
1983-11-13 · 50 min
Fanny has grown up to be an indispensable member of the household at Mansfield Park. During Sir Thomas's absence abroad, the glamorous Crawfords from London stay in the neighbourhood, to the delight of almost everyone.
Episode 3. Episode Three
1983-11-20 · 50 min
Tom and the others want to perform a play in the billiard room but Edmund is against it as their father, still absent, wouldn't care for it.
Episode 4. Episode Four
1983-11-27 · 50 min
Henry decides to make a play for Fanny, whose brother William drops by on leave from the Navy, and, with both daughters gone, Sir Thomas throws a ball for Fanny.
Episode 5. Episode Five
1983-12-04 · 50 min
Henry would marry Fanny. To this end he's seen to William's promotion in the Navy, but Fanny will have none of him.
Episode 6. Episode Six
1983-12-11 · 50 min
As Fanny visits her parents, calamity befalls the Bertrams: Henry runs off with Maria, Tom lies sick with fever and abandoned by his friends, and Edmund glimpses Mary's true character.
I had watched this version of this Jane Austen novel many years ago, and the part that came back to me most clearly was Angela Pleasence’s take on Fanny’s Aunt Bertrand. She plays the role very meekly and soft-spoken. I assume it is how the book portrays her, but it has been even longer since I read the book. It makes it hard to hear her lines at times.
I like this mini-series, but not as much as I enjoy many of the Austen-inspired productions, to be sure. Perhaps part of that is that the novel is not one of my favorites of hers either.
Of course, a little of Mrs. Norris goes a long ways, but that is the point, and Anna Massey does a good job making an irritating character bearable. Some of the characters seem a tad more two-dimensional than I expected, but it held my interest until the end, and that is what counts. Then again, having said that a lack of of depth in some characters, I feel obliged to point of that they could have turned Fanny’s drinking father into a typical abusive bully, but they didn’t. He was useless and sloppy, but not typically violent.
I think it was quite watchable overall, but I find myself hoping someone else takes a stab at fashioning a new version.
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