Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Despite the vast industry that has grown to surround Jane Austen — endless film and TV adaptations, “Jane Austoe” socks in museum gift shops — we still know remarkably little about the author’s personal life. This is partly due to the famous destruction of her letters, burnt by her presumably protective sister Cassandra decades after her death in 1817. Miss Austen is an elegant four-part BBC adaptation of Gill Hornby’s 2020 bestseller and, like the novel, it sets out to discover what these letters could have contained — and what caused Cassandra to throw them into the fire.Keeley Hawes stars as Cassandra, though at 48 she is notably far younger than the heroine, who was 70 and close to death when she destroyed much of Jane’s correspondence. Hawes brings an on-brand warmth and depth to a woman historically sidelined by both her sister’s literary achievements and her own role in obfuscating the Jane Austen story. Here she is the Miss Austen of note, for once, and her own loves and losses finally take the limelight.Or at least they do, briefly, before she is inevitably upstaged by her sister. The revelation here is Patsy Ferran, who plays Jane in flashbacks to the sisters’ younger years. Ferran captures a Jane who is awkward, difficult, acidic. It works brilliantly. Far from the swooning romantic of popular imagination, she is loyal and loving, but occasionally breathtakingly cruel. In imagined letters, Jane exaggerates stories, offers tart commentary on family affairs, and is irritated by happiness as well as the long drag of Cassandra’s grief. Cassandra’s pain at her sister’s version of events is palpable, and the complexity of this Jane is refreshing.This makes for a more melancholy drama than might be expected, at least in the first episode. Not since Wolf Hall has a series been so candlelit and gloomy. It feels a little overstuffed, too, needing more time, perhaps, to unravel the knotty Austen family tree. But it is carried by its big heart and an outstanding ensemble cast. Jessica Hynes is a scene-stealer as sister-in-law Mary, whose dogged obedience to the status quo comes out in waspish asides: “You seem quite worn out from resting.”Eventually, Miss Austen blows out the candles and blossoms into a confident and rousing story about female autonomy, with a splash of period romance. The Jane portrayed here would, no doubt, approve.★★★★☆On BBC1 and iPlayer from 9.05pm on February 2
