TheLittleSongbird Review of Sense and Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility (1981)

Not the best version for me, but I still liked it very much

[8/10 · 30 May 2012]

I love the book, and as much as I do love the 1995 Ang Lee film my favourite version to date is the 2008 version. This 1981 series is very good though, only let down in my opinion by an abrupt ending and Robert Swann's dull Colonel Brandon. However, it is handsomely photographed, and the scenery and costumes look absolutely gorgeous. The music is also effective in its simplicity. The script while not as witty as the Ang Lee film is still literate and true in spirit to Jane Austen's language, and the story while not quite exploring a couple of scenes as well as the 2008 series is still moving and not too rushed or leisurely, in fact it adopts a slow(but never laborious) pace that was perfect considering how the story of the book unfolds. Apart from Swann, I thought the acting was fine. Of the two sisters Mariann and Elinor the Mariann of Tracey Childs I found better. Winslet in the 1995 film is more subtle, but Childs is still quite affecting. Irene Richard is excellent in her scenes between Julia Chambers' Lucy Steele, and is closer than age than Emma Thompson as well as spikier and more confrontational, an approach I liked. Julia Chambers' Lucy is wonderfully catty, Donald Douglas gives a performance of jollity as Sir John, Peter Gale is a sympathetic John Dashwood and Bosco Hogan and Peter Woodward are a dashing Edward and Willoughby respectively. All in all, I liked it very much, though of the three Sense and Sensibility adaptations I've seen thus far it is my least favourite. 8/10 Bethany Cox