Based on the life and letters of Jane Austen, the BBC One feature-length drama Miss Austen Regrets tells the story of the novelist’s final years, examining why, despite setting the standard for romantic fiction, she died having never married or met her own Mr Darcy.

Olivia Williams (The Sixth Sense) stars as Jane Austen who, approaching her 40th birthday, appears happily unmarried, displaying all the assured wit and charm of her novels’ young heroines.

Yet when asked by her young niece, Fanny, played by rising star Imogen Poots (28 Weeks Later), to help her vet potential husbands, Jane’s confident composure is threatened as she finds herself looking back on her own potential suitors and the choices she has made.

A chance meeting with a former acquaintance, Rev Brook Bridges (Hugh Bonneville – Freezing, Five Days), sees her reflect on a marriage that never was, while, when her family faces financial ruin, it is revealed that it all could have been very different had she only accepted a marriage proposal from a wealthy landowner, Harris Bigg.

And when her brother, Henry (Adrian Edmondson – Bottom, Holby City), is taken ill, Jane’s passions are ignited by his handsome young physician, the charming Doctor Charles Haden, played by up-and-coming actor Jack Huston (Factory Girl).

Written by Gwyneth Hughes (Five Days) the drama provides an insight into Austen’s own romantic life.

Speaking about her inspiration for writing the script, Gwyneth says: “Everyone knows Jane Austen never married. For her millions of fans this can only be a relief, because it’s hard to see how a 19th-century wife and mother could have found time to write her six wonderful novels!

“All the same, you do wonder whether she minded; how this spinster lady felt about the absence of a real Mr Darcy in her life.

“And then I read the most extraordinary fact. Jane Austen did receive a proposal of marriage from a wealthy young neighbour. And she accepted! She actually said yes to him – till after a long night of discussion with her sister, Cassandra, she changed her mind.

“This intriguing decision inspired the story of Miss Austen Regrets.”

With the script based on close reading of Austen’s surviving letters, Gwyneth feels that she cannot claim sole credit for the film, commenting: “The script is very tightly based on Austen’s surviving letters to her sister and to her young niece, Fanny.

“So, I must share the credit for quite a lot of the dialogue with Miss Austen herself! And I must say, it’s been a strange and humbling experience to feel this genius of English literature peering critically over my shoulder as I write. But I have loved every moment in her company.”

Producer Anne Pivcevic also produced BBC One’s acclaimed adaptation of Austen’s Sense And Sensibility, which aired earlier this year.

She says: “Producing Miss Austen Regrets and Sense And Sensibility simultaneously last year was an inspiring and illuminating experience for me.

“Jane Austen’s novels are glorious wish-fulfillment fantasies – each girl gets the man she deserves – but Austen’s life, like most real lives, was far more complex and troublesome.

“Gwyneth has created a glitteringly, multi-faceted Jane: she is witty and sad, kind and cruel; a woman who feels regret but, at the same time, is happy with her choices; a woman who despite her 19th century context feels utterly contemporary.”

Additional cast members include Phyllida Law (Mrs Austen), Pip Torrens (Edward Austen-Knight), Sylvie Herbert (Madame Bigeon) and Tom Hiddleston (John Plumptre).

Commissioned by Jane Tranter, Controller, BBC Fiction, Miss Austen Regrets was co-produced by WGBH.

Directed by Jeremy Lovering, the Executive Producer is David Thompson, former Head of BBC Films. The Producer is Anne Pivcevic. The Co-Producer is Jamie Laurenson.

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Miss Austen Regrets was screened by PBS in America earlier this year.

Here are a selection of American reviews of the film:

Hollywood Reporter

“Austen’s life and the world she created in her writing provide ample opportunities for a fine cast that’s dominated by Olivia Williams’ performance as Jane. Knowing that she must sustain a relatively limited emotional journey for 90 minutes, Williams uses the richly expressive nuances of her fine, beautiful face and voice to great and moving effect.”

“The other outstanding performance is 18-year-old Imogen Poots as Jane’s impressionable young niece.”

“Also to be noted are Hugh Bonneville as Jane’s rejected suitor and confidant (a good part, the only man in the story who has much dimensionality to him) and Sylvie Herbert as Austen’s wise French maid.”

“It is easy for a critic to make fun of the cottage industry that Austen has become, but considering Hughes’ polished treatment, Jennie Muskett’s atmospheric music and director Jeremy Lovering’s loving regard for his actors and the gorgeous English countryside, it will be hard for viewers, particularly Austen fans, to have many regrets at all.”

San Francisco Chronicle

“‘Miss Austen Regrets ripples with superb performances, glorious cinematography, thrilling direction and careful attention to authenticity in set and costumes. But what has inspired all of the above is the superb script by Gwyneth Hughes. Yes, she’s able to take scraps from Austen’s surviving correspondence with her sister, Cassandra, and niece, Fanny, and assemble a credible supposition of Austen’s life. But the real glory of the writing is how Hughes delicately snips cuttings from Austen’s fiction and grafts them carefully to the character of the author herself.”

“Williams is superb in the title role. She perfectly embodies the complicated woman that Hughes has pieced together from Austen’s letters and novels. Greta Scacchi is wonderful as Austen’s sister, Cassandra… Strong performances are also delivered by Law as Jane’s mother, Bonneville as Bridges and Imogen Poots as Fanny Knight.”

“Jeremy Lovering directs with care, patience and loving attention to detail. There is virtually nothing to regret in this thought-provoking and heartfelt film.”

USA Today

“In loving, thoughtful fashion, Miss Austen Regrets beautifully contrasts the rich, romantic life the author created in print with the life of unmarried, genteel poverty that was her real-world fate.”

“Shaped by Gwyneth Hughes out of Austen’s books and letters, and wonderfully brought to life by Olivia Williams, this is a woman whom you can imagine writing Pride and Prejudice.”

“What emerges is a touching, often funny picture of a woman who made her choices and was determined to be happy with them.”

Variety

“Beautifully shot and graced with a splendid performance by Olivia Williams.”

“Williams’ soulful and witty embodiment of Austen establishes the novelist as a compellingly independent woman for her day.”

Los Angeles Times

“… it is excellent, due in no small part to a thoroughly imagined performance by Olivia Williams.”

“… while screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes (the excellent kidnapping mini-series Five Days) has drawn some serious curlicues around the few available facts – and she has definitely done her homework – she has also managed to create plausible characters and crises.”

“Williams… gives us a person capable of writing those novels, of imagining all the good and bad within them. This is a complicated Jane, mischievous, loving, sad.”

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Jane Austen was one the finest romantic novelists of all time, her books noted for their wit and sharp social observations and insights into the lives of early 19th century women and the relationship between love, money, marriage and social status.

Born on 16 December 1775 in the village of Steventon in Hampshire, Jane was one of eight children of a clergyman and grew up in a close-knit family. In 1801 the family moved to Bath.

After the death of Jane’s father in 1805 Jane, her sister Cassandra and their mother moved several times eventually settling in Chawton, near Steventon.

Jane started to write as a teenager and her first novel, Sense And Sensibility, appeared in 1811, after her brother Henry helped her to negotiate with a publisher.

Her next novel Pride And Prejudice, which she described as her “own darling child”, received highly favourable reviews.

Mansfield Park was published in 1814, then Emma in 1816.

The novel Emma was dedicated to the Prince Regent, an admirer of her work.

All of Jane Austen’s novels were published anonymously.

In 1816, Jane began to suffer from ill-health. She travelled to Winchester to receive treatment, and died there on 18 July 1817, aged just 41 years old.

Two more novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, were published posthumously and a final novel was left incomplete.

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Gwyneth Hughes trained as a newspaper journalist in the north of England, before becoming a BAFTA-nominated television documentary director, specialising in crime and history.

As a writer of TV drama, she started on ITV’s police drama The Bill and BBC One’s forensic crime drama Silent Witness.

She then wrote two award-winning dramatised true stories: Cherished, for the BBC, which was based on the true story of Angela Cannings, who was wrongly convicted of killing two of her children, and Mysterious Creatures, for ITV, which dealt with the story of a couple who struggle to cope with their daughter’s Asperger’s syndrome.

Gwyneth’s other credits include the ITV drama Blood Strangers, starring Caroline Quentin and Paul McGann, which was nominated for a Prix Italia.

Her original thriller serial Five Days, which tracks five 24-hour periods following the abduction of a beautiful young mother, was shown on BBC One last year to critical acclaim and was nominated for a Golden Globe.

Gwyneth lives in North Yorkshire.

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A huge fan of Austen, Olivia earned a degree in English at Cambridge University, before studying drama at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School for two years.

She also worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company in both Stratford-upon-Avon and London.

A four-month tour of Richard III featuring Sir Ian McKellen took her to the United States and brought her to the attention of Kevin Costner, who handpicked her for his film The Postman.

Since making her film debut opposite Costner in 1997, she has starred in numerous Hollywood films including The Sixth Sense (1999) opposite Bruce Willis and Rushmore (1999) with Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman.

In 2002 she won the Best Actress Award at the British Independent Film Awards for her role in The Heart Of Me, starring alongside Paul Bettany and Helena Bonham-Carter.

In 2006 audiences saw Olivia in the BBC docu-drama Krakatoa: The Last Days which told the true story of one of the most destructive natural disasters in history.

Also in 2006, she returned to the stage for a starring role in The Changeling at the Barbican Theatre, before going on tour with the play.

In April Olivia will be seen in Flashbacks Of A Fool and later in the year in Broken Lines, and she is currently filming An Education.

Olivia resides in London with her husband and their two daughters.

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Based on the life and letters of Jane Austen, the BBC One feature-length drama Miss Austen Regrets tells the story of the novelist’s final years, examining why, despite setting the standard for romantic fiction, she died having never married or met her own Mr Darcy.Olivia Williams (The Sixth Sense) stars as Jane Austen who, approaching her 40th birthday, appears happily unmarried, displaying all the assured wit and charm of her novels’ young heroines.

Yet when asked by her young niece Fanny, played by rising star Imogen Poots (28 Weeks Later), to help her vet potential husbands, Jane’s confident composure is threatened as she finds herself looking back on her own potential suitors and the choices she has made.

A chance meeting with a former acquaintance Rev Brook Bridges (Hugh Bonneville – Freezing, Five Days) sees her reflect on a marriage that never was, while, when her family faces financial ruin, it is revealed that it all could have been very different had she only accepted a marriage proposal from a wealthy landowner, Harris Bigg.

And when her brother Henry (Adrian Edmondson – Bottom, Holby City) is taken ill, Jane’s passions are ignited by his handsome young physician, the charming Doctor Charles Haden, played by the up and coming actor Jack Huston (Factory Girl).

Written by Gwyneth Hughes (Five Days) the drama provides an insight into Austen’s own romantic life.

Speaking about her inspiration for writing the script, Gwyneth says: “Everyone knows Jane Austen never married. For her millions of fans this can only be a relief, because it’s hard to see how a 19th century wife and mother could have found time to write her six wonderful novels!

“All the same, you do wonder whether she minded; how this spinster lady felt about the absence of a real Mr Darcy in her life.

“And then I read the most extraordinary fact. Jane Austen did receive a proposal of marriage from a wealthy young neighbour. And she accepted! She actually said yes to him – till after a long night of discussion with her sister Cassandra, she changed her mind.

“This intriguing decision inspired the story of Miss Austen Regrets.”

With the script based on close reading of Austen’s surviving letters, Gwyneth feels that she cannot claim sole credit for the film, commenting: “The script is very tightly based on Austen’s surviving letters to her sister and to her young niece, Fanny.

“So I must share the credit for quite a lot of the dialogue with Miss Austen herself! And I must say, it’s been a strange and humbling experience to feel this genius of English literature peering critically over my shoulder as I write. But I have loved every moment in her company.”

Producer Anne Pivcevic also produced BBC One’s acclaimed adaptation of Austen’s Sense And Sensibility, which aired earlier this year.

She says: “Producing Miss Austen Regrets and Sense And Sensibility simultaneously last year was an inspiring and illuminating experience for me.

“Jane Austen’s novels are glorious wish fulfillment fantasies – each girl gets the man she deserves – but Austen’s life, like most real lives was far more complex and troublesome.

“Gwyneth has created a glitteringly multi-faceted Jane: she is witty and sad, kind and cruel; a woman who feels regret but at the same time is happy with her choices; a woman who despite her 19th century context feels utterly contemporary.”

Additional cast members include Phyllida Law (Mrs Austen), Pip Torrens (Edward Austen-Knight), Sylvie Herbert (Madame Bigeon) and Tom Hiddleston (John Plumptre).

Commissioned by Jane Tranter, Controller, BBC Fiction, Miss Austen Regrets was co-produced by WGBH.

Directed by Jeremy Lovering, the Executive Producer is David Thompson, former Head of BBC Films. The Producer is Anne Pivcevic. The Co-Producer is Jamie Laurenson.

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According to Hugh Bonneville Online we can expect to see the film on BBC One over Easter.

There is a trailer available on the PBS website.

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Filmed in the U.K. by WGBH and the BBC. Executive producers, Rebecca Eaton, David M. Thompson; producers, Anne Pivcevic, Jamie Laurenson; director, Jeremy Lovering; writer, Gwyneth Hughes;

Jane Austen - Olivia Williams
Fanny Austen-Knight - Imogene Poots
Cassandra - Greta Scacchi
Harris Bigg - Samuel Roukin
Rev. Brook Bridges - Hugh Bonneville
Charles Haden - Jack Huston

Beautifully shot and graced with a splendid performance by Olivia Williams, Jane Austen biopic “Miss Austen Regrets” focuses on a relatively narrow window in the author’s life, serving as something of a companion to “Becoming Jane,” the 2007 feature about a young Austen starring Anne Hathaway. It is also, blessedly, less sappy than the Austen adaptations surrounding it within what “Masterpiece Theater” has christened “The Complete Jane Austen,” with the one drawback being that PBS has foolishly scheduled it opposite the Super Bowl in most of the country.

Olivia Williams stars as novelist Jane Austen in PBS’ biopic ‘Miss Austen Regrets,’ airing Sunday at 9 p.m. on ‘Masterpiece Theater.’

This BBC-WGBH collaboration zeroes in on Austen nearing her 40th birthday — never married and struggling financially, along with her family. Gwyneth Hughes (who penned the recent HBO miniseries “Five Days”) has stitched together the screenplay based on the writer’s surviving correspondence to her sister Cassandra (Greta Scacchi, also excellent) and her idolizing niece Fanny (Imogene Poots), who dreams of finding the sort of swoon-inducing romance that Aunt Jane has immortalized in her novels.

Despite the title, however, Williams’ Austen is no shrinking violet prone to recriminations, rather she sees her novels as beloved children and the decision not to wed as vital to the freedom she enjoyed in birthing them. As for men, she says tartly, “I never found one worth giving up flirting for.”

This isn’t to say Austen is without self-doubts, lamenting at one point how “small” her work is, unable to know the enduring success she would achieve beyond her lifetime. Left somewhat fuzzy, meanwhile, are the details surrounding Cassandra dissuading Jane from marrying early in life — a union that would have secured her economic future — though as presented, the bond between the sisters is both strong and moving. The narrative also introduces a trio of Jane’s former suitors, among them a since-married reverend (Hugh Bonneville), who has clearly never gotten over her.

Hughes and director Jeremy Lovering inevitably must rely on some filler and guesswork, since Cassandra burned many of Jane’s letters — the speculation being that she did so to spare relatives and friends from her sister’s sharp tongue. Even so, Williams’ soulful and witty embodiment of Austen establishes the novelist as a compellingly independent woman for her day, and her single life seems especially poignant given the happy-ending formula she perfected in such literary fixtures as “Emma,” “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility.”

The only real shame would be if “Miss Austen Regrets” goes more unseen than most “Masterpiece” fare because of PBS’ scheduling, which forces the hollow-eyed Jane to compete against several dozen heavily muscled gentlemen in padded uniforms. It’s the kind of dunderheaded scenario, frankly, from which even the dashing Mr. Darcy would be hard-pressed to affect a rescue.

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She’s only 18, and she describes herself as naive, but actress Imogen Poots, who’s starring in the BBC’s big Christmas costume drama about the life of Jane Austen, has no illusions about menImogen Poots is sitting patiently while two stylists blast volume into her wavy blond hair and a make-up artist discusses the best way to enhance her startlingly blue eyes. She’s chatty and upbeat, but every so often, she cannot help but stifle an apologetic yawn.

She’s just back from Los Angeles where she has spent a week in meetings with her new agency – the same agency that represents Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Katie Holmes and Helen Mirren.

“It was so cool,” she gushes. “But I haven’t slept properly in 48 hours.”

Imogen is 18 and to many of her peers it must seem like she is living the dream. Six months ago she was a sixth former doing A-levels. Today she is here to talk about her leading role in Miss Austen Regrets, the BBC’s major period drama for Christmas.

Imogen’s burgeoning career is founded upon a steadfast confidence

Based on the life and letters of Jane Austen, the feature-length film focuses on the author’s later years. Imogen plays Jane’s niece Fanny, an ingénue who looks to her spinster aunt for guidance on matters of the heart.

According to producer Anne Pivcevic, “Imogen has that combination of naivety and consummate intelligence that made her perfect. As soon as we saw her, there was never any question that she was Fanny.”

Imogen is suitably flattered when I relay this to her. “I am naive and unknowing and excitable – all those things,” she says effusively. But you also sense, as she talks, that she has a clear-sightedness beyond her years.

Her week-long trip to LA was one that she made alone, having booked herself not into some swanky hotel but a Beverly Hills B&B.

“I needed to keep the costs down and it’s good travelling by yourself. It makes you self-sufficient,” she says.

Imogen as Fanny in the BBC’s upcoming Miss Austen Regrets

While she may look gamine to the point of fragility, Imogen’s burgeoning career is founded upon a steadfast confidence. The best thing about her parents, she says, is that they encourage her, “but they also stand back and let me get on with it.”

Her mother, Fiona, is an enthusiastic theatre-goer who is also writing a novel, and her father Trevor is a TV producer.

Home life with her elder brother Alex – 21 and studying at Oxford – appears to have been fairly middle of the road until Imogen joined Young Blood, a youth drama group in West London, when she was 14.

“It was something to do on a Saturday,” she says. She’d never before shown any leanings towards acting (”I was always something ridiculous like a leaf in school plays”), but at Young Blood a spark was ignited.

Within a year she’d made her screen debut as a pregnant teenager in Casualty. At 15 she was cast as a younger version of Natalie Portman’s character in the film V for Vendetta.

Last year, she starred in another sci-fi horror, 28 Weeks Later, as young heroine Tammy, which also required her to take three months out of school at a critical stage in her A-Level courses.

Fortunately, staff at Latymer Upper School (alumni include Hugh Grant and Lily Cole) were happy to support her, “and Mum and Dad knew I was motivated,” she says. “I worked my bum off.”

By the time the exam results came in, Imogen was in the Oxfordshire countryside filming Miss Austen Regrets.

“Mum picked them up, but I didn’t want to know until after filming, because if they had been bad, I would have been sobbing my way through the script.”

She needn’t have worried – she achieved three As in English, history of art and art, which was a very good reason for a celebration among the cast and crew. Film sets, she has already discovered, are intense, intimate environments.

“You spend weeks working so closely together that these people become like a surrogate family.”

I guess that she must find plenty of colleagues willing to take her under their wings.

“Yes, but what I like more is that when I’m working my age becomes irrelevant,” she says. “As a teenager, you are socially confined to people your own age, but I became best friends with a guy of 32.”

A platonic friendship, she adds quickly, just in case anyone is about to jump to conclusions.

After the gore and grit of her previous roles, it must have been a joy to immerse herself in costume drama.

“The corsets virtually cut off your breasts. I can’t imagine how women ever lived in those clothes,” she grimaces. She wasn’t an Austen devotee (’I'd read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility’), yet she quickly grasped the perennial Austen conundrum – should a girl marry for love or money?

In Miss Austen Regrets, the recurring advice Jane gives to Fanny is that she must marry for love.

“It’s something we take for granted today – that we can earn our own living and marry whom we like,” Imogen says. “But it was a harsh world then because women were reliant on men for their status.”

I wonder if Imogen has fallen in love herself, but she is evasive on the subject of boyfriends. “I’m too young,” she says, laughing. “I’ve done what Fanny does – met someone, thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m in love!’ and had those intense times where nothing else matters.”

“I think that happens constantly when you’re young because there will always be someone older and wiser to look up to,” she adds. “But I don’t believe in Mr Darcy. Men like him only exist in fiction.”

For Imogen, the thought of marriage is far too distant on the horizon. She’s currently on a gap year, which in her case involves moving from film project to film project. She’s just been cast in Waking Madison, a psychological thriller to be shot in New Orleans, and her next decision will be whether to go to university or to forego a degree in history of art for acting.

In an ideal world, she says, she’d do both, like Natalie Portman, who studied psychology at Harvard while working. “I really admire the way she combined the job with her studies,” she says.

However, for Imogen, memories of tearful nights, “when you have ten essays to write and only four hours to finish them,” are still fresh.

She’d like a degree to fall back on, though. “Acting is a fickle business – 99 per cent of it is about rejection,” she says, despite not being able to cite one occasion where she has been knocked back.

She’s exquisite to look at, hard-working and clearly talented. If she proves also to be resilient, it won’t be long before she’s upgrading from that Beverly Hills B&B to somewhere more salubrious.

Miss Austen Regrets will be screened on BBC1 in the New Year

www.dailymail.co.uk

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Of all the love stories filling the rich imagination of Jane Austen, one in particular did not end with wedding bells. Her own. Why did the author who embodied the brilliant wit and high spirits of her heroines not take the plunge into matrimony herself? Therein lies a very poignant tale, as presented by MASTERPIECE in its bittersweet period drama, Miss Austen Regrets, airing Sunday, February 3, 2008 at 9pm ET on PBS (check local listings), as part of MASTERPIECE’s The Complete Jane Austen.

Olivia Williams (Sixth Sense, Rushmore) stars as Jane, approaching her fortieth birthday and long since at peace with being an unmarried woman—indeed enjoying its freedom and solitude to write. She has even developed a devoted readership that reaches as high as the Prince Regent, the future King George IV.

But like the title character of her latest book, Emma, Jane soon finds that it is emotionally perilous to get involved in someone else’s love life—not least because it kindles a certain romantic longing of one’s own.

Imogen Poots plays Fanny Austen-Knight, Jane’s marriageable young niece who looks up to Aunt Jane as smart, edgy, and a fount of wisdom on the merits of potential husbands. But Fanny’s importunate queries—and fate—bring Jane’s memories of lost loves flooding back.

Greta Scacchi (Daniel Deronda) plays Cassandra, Jane’s older sister and the confidante of her innermost thoughts. Years earlier, it was Cassandra who persuaded Jane to rescind her acceptance of the marriage proposal by Harris Bigg (Samuel Roukin). The heir to a fortune, Bigg would have guaranteed the Austen family’s financial security, if not necessarily Jane’s happiness.

Hugh Bonneville (Iris) plays another former suitor, the Reverend Brook Bridges. Smitten with Jane as a young man, he could not pluck up the courage to ask her to marry him. Much later, when he finally did propose, Jane had given up on marrying anybody.

Prospect number three is dashing physician Charles Haden ( Jack Huston). As the drama unfolds, Jane summons him to treat her desperately ill brother Henry (Adrian Edmonson) and ends up in a flirting relationship with the much younger medical man.

Miss Austen Regrets was written by Gwyneth Hughes, who based her script on Austen’s surviving correspondence with Cassandra and Fanny. The characters and incidents in the film are drawn from these letters, with Hughes reading carefully between the lines to fill in crucial gaps.

Cassandra notoriously burned many of her sister’s letters after Jane’s death—an act that was probably intended to spare the feelings of still-living relatives and acquaintances, who were the target of Jane’s famous barbs.

As for Jane’s barbs against her own headstrong resistance to a conventional life, these survived to leave a remarkable record of a mind of sense and sensibility, pride and prejudice, ceaselessly active in the real world of imperfect suitors and in the make-believe realm of true love fulfilled.

Miss Austen Regrets is a WGBH/BBC coproduction. The producers are Anne Pivcevic (Sense and Sensibility, Doctor Zhivago) and Jamie Laurenson. It was written by Gwyneth Hughes and directed by Jeremy Lovering.

courtesy of pbs.org/masterpiece

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