The Other Bennet Sister TV series: Re-imagining of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice gives life to Mary

Poor Mary, the overlooked, plain and least impressive of the Bennet sisters.

She doesn’t have Jane’s beauty, Lizzie’s wit, Lydia’s vivacity or Kitty’s shameless spirit. As the middle sister, she is the one most likely to be forgotten in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, remembered, if for anything, as the Bennet who had to be stopped from singing in public.

That’s why Mary is the most surprising and yet the most unsurprising Bennet sister to get her spin-off series.

The Other Bennet Sister is a 10-episode rom-com that is squarely focused on Mary. Lizzie barely features and Darcy is but a glowering presence in the background who doesn’t even have any lines, at least not in the first four episodes made available for review.

It’s almost always interesting when a supporting or background character is thrust into the lead as long as they are bequeathed an interesting inner life, and this series takes great care to present Mary as someone whose mind was whirring just out of frame.

Starring Call the Midwife’s Ella Bruccoleri gives a sympathetic performance as Mary, and even in those early episodes, there’s a clear progression as the character transforms from the timid creature dulled by her overbearing mother’s passive-aggressive cruelty to someone finally free to discover who she is.

The first two episodes rehash the Pride and Prejudice story you know – the arrivals of Bingley and Darcy, Mr Collins’ intrusion at Longbourne, the marriages of three of the sisters – but all from Mary’s perspective.

She tries gain Mr Collins’ favour, not out of affection but for practicalities, and there is something incredibly heartbreaking about how she speaks of herself as being someone who would not refuse him because she was in no position to.

How Mary is treated by Mrs Bennet has a tangible effect on her confidence and her self-worth, especially how she sees herself in relation to everyone else, especially her sisters. It’s refreshing to see a version of this story where Lizzie is not the hero, if anything, she comes off as cold.

It’s a cleverly woven set-up because it reframes a familiar world, and it serves as a great jumping off point for the meat of the story, which is when Mary is freed from the yolk of her immediate family.

At roughly the conclusion of the Pride and Prejudice portion, she is beckoned to London to be the governess to the children of her aunt (Indira Varma) and uncle (Richard Coyle), Mrs and Mr Gardiner, who are kindly and warm.

Mary doesn’t even seem to realise that she is in a vastly different environment, not just the excitement and possibilities of London and loads of people she’s never met who might have the same intellectual curiosity as she does.

But it’s been in a house where she is valued and not an inconvenience. It takes a little adjusting as she, at first, continues to make herself as small as she has felt her whole life.

There is something incredibly bolstering about watching a woman realise she doesn’t need to live to make accommodations for everyone else, that small acts of being seen as a person help them see themselves.

In this, Bruccoleri’s performance is brimming with compassion for Mary. She can carry so much pain in the character’s eyes, and she makes small changes, in physicality, in her voice, as Mary starts to step outside of that internalised cage.

The next six episodes promise an adventure to the Lake District and if the series can continue on this trajectory of opening up Mary’s world beyond the judgment of Longbourne, then this has the potential to be a great re-imagining of Austen’s story.

The Other Bennet Sister is streaming on Binge