How Jane Austen’s unfinished novel ‘Sanditon’ became a TV show
Completing an iconic author’s unfinished story is a daunting task — so big-gun literary guru Andrew Davies was brought in to adapt Jane Austen’s “Sanditon” into a PBS series premiering Sunday night.
The Emmy- and BAFTA-winning Davies, 83, penned nearly all the major adaptations of classics in the past 30 years, including the 1995 “Pride and Prejudice” series starring Colin Firth; the British “House of Cards,” (1990); “Bleak House” (2005); “Sense & Sensibility” (2008); “War & Peace” (2016); “Les Miserables” (2018); and now “Sanditon,” premiering Sunday at 9 p.m. on “Masterpiece.”
“Making up the story is not really my strongest point, so I was a bit worried whether I’d be able to generate enough plot,” Davies tells The Post, referring to the fact that Austen wrote just 11 chapters of the book before her death in 1817.
“But [when British network ITV approached me], it presented an intriguing possibility,” he says. “As with Austen’s other novels, the story comes from the interaction with the characters. I just thought about what Jane Austen had put in place and thought if it was me, how would I develop those elements?
“She didn’t write much story, but she did give us nearly all the principal characters and the premise, which is about the building of a seaside town. There were a lot of promising things to work with.”
Set in early 1800s England in the Regency era, “Sanditon” follows Charlotte Heywood (Rose Williams, “Reign”), a young woman who joins entrepreneur Tom Parker (Kris Marshall, “Better Things”) and his family at Sanditon — a seaside resort he’s developing. There, she encounters an ensemble of characters including the dowager Lady Denham (Anne Reid, “Years and Years”), a pair of scheming siblings out for her fortune (played by Jack Fox and Charlotte Spencer) and Tom’s brothers: the goofy Arthur (Turlough Convery, “Poldark”) and the dashing-yet-churlish Sidney (Theo James, “Downton Abbey”). Sidney is also guardian to Georgiana Lambe (Crystal Clarke, “Black Mirror”), Austen’s first black heroine.
“There were more [people of various races] about at England at that time than is generally supposed,” says Davies. “Miss Lambe is an heiress, which makes her extremely eligible. Even though she would encounter a lot of open prejudice, on the other hand she’d be quite a match for any young man. So you’ve got that interesting juxtaposition.”
Davies, who lives in England with his wife, is known for spicing up his adaptations from their source material. For instance, one scene in “Sanditon” features Sidney standing in water, echoing “Pride and Prejudice’s” scene of Colin Firth’s Darcy in a lake — a famous moment that’s not in the book.
“People seemed to like it before, so I thought ‘Let’s do it again,’ ” he says. “I was aiming to be true to the time. Really, we were making up an Austen novel, not just slavishly copying Austen. There is a bit of nudity; gentlemen did used to bathe naked in those days. Fortunately we had some exceptionally finely endowed gentlemen in the cast… although I felt very sorry for them, because it was quite cold and windy weather. There was considerable danger of hypothermia, but they gritted their teeth and got on with it.”
Davies hopes to follow the eight-episode “Sanditon” with a Season 2, which he says will depend on the size of the American audience. In the meantime, he has no plans to retire.
“I’m currently engaged in doing an adaptation of John Updike’s ‘Rabbit’ novels,” he says. “I’m also looking at doing Hardy’s ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge.’ Perhaps I’m taking it slightly more easy — but I’m as busy as I’ve ever been.”