Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius, review: lifeless reconstructions aside, plenty for Janeites to tuck into

Telegraph

26-05-2025

' Jane Austen changed fiction forever.' For once the hyperbole is apt. Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius (BBC Two), following similar series on Shakespeare and Mozart, considers the woman who permanently reset the course of comic fiction. The edutainment format established by 72 Films offers, once again, a mixed grill of clips, talking heads and dramatic reconstruction, with Juliet Stevenson's reassuring voice-over.
Austen's compact canon and wide fan base make her a neat fit for a three-part treatment. Northanger Abbey gets its proper due, as do the juvenilia and the unfinished works, while knowledge of her novels is spread nicely among academics, authors and actors, not to mention the odd admiral.
It's fun and mainly illuminating to hear from writers, notably Helen Fielding, who still extract inspiration from Austen. Meanwhile, with furrowed brows, the scholars line up to explain how the life links to the work. Best at presenting Austen's depths with a contemporary relish is Bee Rowlatt, who talks of 'boss moves' and 'stonking bangers' with a brainy swagger suggestive of Emma Thompson.
Austen is the cause of a great lexical panoply in her admirers. On the one hand, there's Colm Tóibín's graceful delineation of narrative subtext. Here, on the other, is Tom Bennett on playing a rich suitor from Lady Susan: 'He's a f---ing idiot.' Sam West talks with twinkling wisdom about the novels' timeless empathies. 'He does what a partner should do,' he says of Captain Wentworth, 'he relieves you of your burden.' From a personal perspective that doesn't feel out of place, Greg Wise – the caddish Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility – reflects movingly on Austen's death in the arms of her sister Cassandra.
There are of course plenty of adaptations to cite. The choice is sometimes right. For Emma's cruel humiliation of the chatterbox Miss Bates on Box Hill, the best version finds Gwyneth Paltrow being haughty to a quite brilliant Sophie Thompson. And sometimes wrong: the canonical version of Persuasion is Roger Michell's from 1995, not the recent Netflix misfire used here. NB to Janeites: there's no sign of Colin Firth. Whatever the version used, the edit skips breathlessly from clip to clip as if swiping right on the apps.
As for literary analysis, there's not quite enough on the supple glories of Austen's prose. The profound innovations of free indirect speech and the unreliable narrator are dispatched in haste. Not that its own narrative is always reliable, especially on Mansfield Park.
Cherie Blair is on hand to explain the titular allusion to the Mansfield Judgement, which delivered the first limitation on slavery in England. But nobody mentions that Austen makes only one passing allusion to the slave trade. Quoting from Patricia Rozema's very free adaptation from 2000, the implication is that Fanny Price is expelled from the grand house for having the temerity to talk of emancipation. This feels disingenuous.
Still, even if you feel you know the work, there's enough here to tuck into. But you'll require a tolerant digestive tract to stomach the inert reconstructions of Austen's life. The credits reveal that Jane is wordlessly embodied by one Emőke Zsigmond, while Hampshire is played by Hungary. She'd find that comical.