The 'Miss Austen' Premiere Sees Jane's Sister Cassandra Revisit the Past

This year marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth. While pretty much everyone is at least in some way familiar with her works and the iconic characters she created, far fewer know much about her personal or family life. There's surprisingly little to know; one can rattle off the names of Jane's family members and the locations where she lived, but all that remains of her interior self exists only on the pages of her novels. Her sister, Cassandra, famously committed one of history's acts of literary destruction: burning the bulk of Jane's correspondence following her death. It's estimated she wrote ~3,000 letters by the time she passed at age 41, but only ~160 of them (presumably the most boring and banal) survive. 

To many, Cassandra Austen is an epic villain. Eager to protect her sister and their family's reputation for unknown reasons —Fear? Jealousy? The idea that Jane could only ever truly belong to those who knew her?— She ensured no information about the real woman survived. But that's not the story the new Masterpiece drama Miss Austen is interested in telling.

Instead, this four-part drama is here to give Cassandra Austen her moment in the proverbial sun. Though she's aged down a bit by being played by future Dame Keeley Hawes (the real Cassandra was around 70 when she burned Jane's letters), her story is softened and deepened, but still firmly focused on the single key relationship of her life. It will do little to assuage the anger of the most hardcore Austenites, but it's a lovely reminder that the rich sisterly affection that infuses Jane's novels was likely something she first learned about at home.

Based on the novel by Gil Hornby, the story of Miss Austen is told across two timelines. The primary plot follows an adult Cassandra years after Jane's death as she receives a letter from family friend Isabella Fowle (Rose Leslie), whose late mother Eliza was a close companion of both Austen sisters. Isabella's father, the Reverand Fulwar Fowle (Felix Scott), is dying. Though she insists Cassandra shouldn't inconvenience herself by trying to visit their Kintbury home during his last days, the elder Austen ignores that request completely. 

Part of this is, naturally, because Cassandra has cared about the Fowles for most of her life, but it's also immediately apparent that she has an ulterior motive. (Stealth, it would appear, is not a talent this woman possesses, since she tells her maid straight up that she intends to retrieve some items of a personal nature from the Kintbury rectory. "What could it be?" asked literally no one watching.) 

Crashing into Isabella's home in the middle of the night and largely against her wishes, Cassandra arrives in time to spend a few last moments with Fulwar and promise to see his daughter safely settled with her sisters after he's gone. But she doesn't even make it a full night before she starts snooping, and though she's immediately caught by Isabella's sharp-eyed maid Dinah (Mirren Mack), she remains undeterred in her search. The next day, her sleuthing pays off: A stash of letters in Eliza's room, including a stack from Jane*. 

(*The show implies that Eliza passed some time ago, so one wonders why no one had bothered to go through her things before her husband was on his literal deathbed, but well. Every story needs a set-up, I guess.)

The series' second timeline unfolds as Cassandra begins to read her late sister's correspondence, the show flashing back to 1797 to show us one of the Austen family's earlier visits to Kintbury. A young, glowing Cassy (now played by Synnøve Karlsen) arrives alongside her sister Jane (Patsy Ferran), already a sharp observer of those around her. That the bubbly, younger Cassy bears so little resemblance to her older self in terms of demeanor is perhaps our first hint that some tragedy of life is waiting in the wings for her. 

Miss Austen, at the moment, is busy getting engaged to Eliza's handsome brother Tom (Calam Lynch), who it's clear she's been attached to for some time. They're darling together, and the Austen parents (played by real-life spouses Kevin McNally and Phyllis Logan) are overjoyed that poor Tom finally got around to popping the question, even if Jane is a bit discomfited at the thought of losing the sister who's her constant companion. 

Not everything is as perfect as it seems, however. While proposing, Tom neglected to mention that he had promised to join an expedition to the West Indies departing in a fortnight. He'll be gone for a year, and insists this plan will secure his new family's future. Cassy vows she'll never marry another if anything happens to him while he's gone, another extremely unsubtle foreshadowing that explains a lot about the modern-day Cassandra we're also watching.

If anything, the flashback scenes feel like nothing so much as an Austen novel in progress, as Mrs. Austen becomes obsessed with wedding planning and Cassy herself takes up the business of matchmaking, attempting to fix up her brother James (Patrick Knowles), a widower with a young daughter, with her future sister-in-law Mary (Liv Hill). Though the impetus seems to come from a good place, Jane is particularly resistant, claiming that the ease of fully uniting their two families is as behind Cassy's plotting as any consideration of whether Mary might be a good match for their brother. None of the girls (even her sister Eliza!) seems to like Mary all that much, a read that will prove more and more apt as their lives (and this story) progress. 

Case in point: The utterly cruel and abrupt way Mary delivers the news of the death of Cassy's fiancé. The matter-of-fact way in which she describes Tom's death from yellow fever and the specifics of his agreement with his benefactor is cold and off-putting, made even more so by the fact that she so unabashedly lies about Cassy's reaction in a letter she writes to Eliza on the subject. That this is the girl who will grow up to become a woman longing to write a biography that sidelines Jane's achievements in favor of her husband's...well, it sure tracks.

The adult Cassandra is taken aback that her alleged friend lied so blatantly about her all those years ago. Suddenly, her desperation to keep Jane's letters out of the hands of a woman like that makes much more sense. Though we've still yet to see anything beyond some snarky commentary about her relatives in Jane's missives, so what exactly Cassandra's so afraid anyone reading of is as yet...unclear. Is it some dark secret about Jane? Or perhaps about Cassandra herself? Thus far, the "present-day" Cassandra storyline is unfortunately Miss Austen's least interesting element. Hawes is, as usual, a mesmerizing performer, but much of what she's given to work with here is dull and exposition-heavy. 

However, the premiere does its best to reflect some of the real-life issues facing unmarried women that Jane so often wrote about. Barred from Fulwar's graveside service and his will reading, Isabella longs for independence and a chance to make her own choices. Instead, she's being forced to leave her family home behind, as the rectory is set to pass to an uncomfortably effusive clergymen whose behavior feels Mr. Elton-from-Emma coded. 

(If we're looking for more Austen parallels, Isabella also has a yearning, vaguely Persuasion-esque vibe — and some unspoken history —with the handsome doctor (Alfred Enoch) caring for her father.) 

Hawes and Leslie have an intriguingly prickly sort of chemistry together. Isabella could not be less interested in the prospect of being packed off to her sister's, and Cassandra can't shut up about the power of sisterhood long enough to see it. (There's more than a bit of Sense & Sensibility's Elinor Dashwood in her over-the-top obsession with duty.) The story needs the titular Miss Austen in Kintbury for narrative purposes. However, at least in this premiere, the framework of her literary vandalism is much less compelling than the story of Cassy, Jane, and their family several decades prior. Perhaps now that the board is fully set, so to speak, its story can properly begin.

Miss Austen airs on most local PBS stations and streams on the PBS app weekly on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET. All episodes are available for PBS Passport members and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel to binge before their on-air broadcast.