Binge-Watching The Other Bennet Sister
How a show about the most overlooked Bennet sister became my feel-good obsession of the week
Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash
I think it was this past Thursday evening, during the time I had been trying to establish as a new family game night tradition, but that recently fell by the wayside, that my oldest daughter asked me to call my oldest sister to see if we could use her BritBox account. She had watched the first episode of The Other Bennet Sister, a freebie from one of the many streaming services out there, and she liked it so much that she wanted to watch the remaining nine episodes of the series.
Soon after dinner I called my sister, and a few minutes later I was able to sign us in on the living room television and started to make my way to the office (which also happens to be my library) to read, but things turned out quite differently. I didn’t know this, but my wife had also watched the first episode, and now, together with my daughter, she insisted I should plop down on the couch and watch at least one episode with them, to see what I thought about it. Between sitting down for at least 30 minutes to watch something inspired by Jane Austen’s oeuvre and reading my sci-fi book, I was much inclined toward the latter, and that was not a knock on Jane Austen. I just felt that maybe what I needed at the end of a quite intense day at the (home) office was to unplug from the real world and immerse myself in a fictional one, and hopefully get lost among the many interesting characters that the book had so curiously brought together on a 400-year trip to escape a dying planet Earth toward a new “promised land.”
Yet I relented and sat down next to my wife on the newly acquired used couch, and with a bowl of red grapes in front of us, settled in to at least give the series a try, but without making any promises that I’d stick around for the entire thing. I know that I have read at least one of Jane Austen’s books, Sense and Sensibility, and my Read list on Goodreads shows that I gave it 3 out of 5 stars back in 2015, but I can’t tell you what that book is about if my life depended on it. It’s not that the book is unremarkable, necessarily, but maybe because there have been so many movie adaptations based on Jane Austen’s books that they all start to blend together in my mind, and I can’t easily tell them apart. My older sister, on the other hand, has read all of her books and seen pretty much all the adaptations multiple times over.
I thought that maybe I was at a disadvantage for starting on episode 2 while my daughter and wife had already watched the first one, but as the minutes went by and as the characters made their entrance, I found myself being transported back to Georgian England, following the idyllic lives of the five Bennet sisters as they experienced the pressures from society. Then there was their super-eager mother, who would stop at nothing until her daughters were properly “matched” with a gentleman who could provide the financial support and social gravitas expected of eligible women of marrying age.
Did I say FIVE sisters? To be quite honest, I had always thought there were only FOUR of the Bennet sisters: Jane, Liz, Kitty and Lydia. I had to go and look it up, and sure enough, there were five of them — and if you, like me, forgot about Mary, then you’re not alone. The BritBox series is based on a recent novel by Janice Hadlow, The Other Bennet Sister, which reimagines Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of much-overlooked character Mary Bennet, a quiet, bookish middle sister that nobody talks much about, especially her mother.
If you’re familiar with the old fairy tale The Ugly Duckling, then you’re familiar with the plot of one being rejected for being who they are, the pressure of being pushed to conform and adjust to other people’s expectations, and the eventual lesson of self-acceptance and transformation from the eponymous main character into a beautiful swan, and The Other Bennet Sister is no different. And yet, all the characters are so humanly constructed, with relatable insecurities and flaws—none impossible to redeem or explain, once the right occasion arises to peel back the individual onions that they are—that one cannot help but feel completely captivated. Throw in the several witty dialogues between Mary Bennet and the other characters, including the conversations with her father’s cousin Mr. Collins, and the way that poetry, a genre I confess to struggle with myself, intertwines with the conversations she has with Mr. Hayward and Mr. Ryder, and… I guess you can see where I’m going with this, right?
We watched episodes 2 and 3 that Thursday evening, and I deliberately chose to turn off the TV before the next episode had a chance of starting, telling everyone that perhaps it would be wiser to wait until Friday to watch a few more so that we could enjoy the series better. I received a fair amount of teasing from my wife for enjoying the series when I had first opted for reading my book instead.
Friday evening couldn’t arrive soon enough, and I was the first one to suggest that we should watch a few more episodes to check on how Ms. Bennet was faring. Before the evening was over, we had swiftly gone through episodes 4 through 8, at which point I once again suggested we should pace ourselves and save the remaining two episodes for Saturday evening.
The next day brought with it the usual routine of driving one of our daughters to school, cleaning the house, dusting, and grocery shopping, as well as a visit to see my parents in the morning for breakfast. But as the evening approached and we started to settle down for the day, the truth is I could hardly wait to get in front of the TV to see how things would pan out for Ms. Bennet. Our oldest daughter chose to watch the US Open the night before and was still on episode 7, but we convinced her to “fill in the blanks.”
The reluctance came from my worry that the ending would fall short and not be worthy of the “time investment” I had poured into the series — time I could have spent reading my sci-fi book instead. Either way, I was a bit apprehensive when I sat down to watch the denouement of the series.
The next 60 minutes were a true delight to my senses, and I’m not ashamed to say that I came close to tears at the very end, when all the pieces of the puzzle came together. Mr. Hayward’s speech at the end was so powerfully delivered, with such remarkable feeling, that the romantic in me had to hold back a sob (a few furtive tears did get away, with no attempt to hide them) and joke with my wife out loud, saying, with fake nonchalance, “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.”
Something has happened to me since COVID that I can’t quite explain, or maybe just never took the time to investigate, but I now find myself more and more attracted to what I can only describe as feel-good shows and movies. I’m not talking about the Hallmark movies on television, at least not yet, but the type of feel-good situations where life wasn’t as complicated or fast-paced, with jam-packed agendas and schedules for every hour of your day. The simpler times when people sat down together to have a proper meal with friends and family without a television blaring in the background or competing with devices sending notifications every other minute. When, after a long day of honest hard work, you might pop into the pub for a pint with friends and acquaintances — quick note: I am not really a drinker per se — not for the alcohol but for the camaraderie and comfort of connecting with others. The times of leisure walks in the evening, the non-rushed trips to the local market, with the potential stop at a coffee shop for a pastry and a chat about non-work-related topics.
Well, The Other Bennet Sister gave me that in spades and then some, and now that it’s over, I feel that I need something else to fill the gap that it has left. Or maybe it’s time for me to finally watch the last season of All Creatures Great and Small, or for me to catch up with Ted Lasso? Or maybe I should slow it down a bit and enjoy the nice burst of endorphins that got released this Saturday. After all, it was John Steinbeck, one of my all-time favorites, who said: “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?”
