Sense is correct judgment. Sensibility is quickness of emotion. Two sisters with wildly different proportions of each throw their hearts into the search for true love in Masterpiece’s delightful new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, airing Sunday, March 30 and April 6 at 9/8 p.m. CT on KET1 and Thursday, April 3 and 10 at 9/8 p.m. CT on KET2.
Newcomer Hattie Morahan plays the sister with sense, Elinor Dashwood, who is also kind, good-tempered and scrupulously discreet. Fortunately, Elinor has a passionate streak just waiting for release. On the sensibility side is Elinor’s outgoing, impetuous younger sister, Marianne, who is inclined to cast caution to the wind where men are concerned. Before the story is over, however, Marianne learns to tap her inner reserves of rationality.
Janet McTeer (“The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard”) stars as the girls’ mother, the widowed matriarch, living in virtual penury thanks to a spineless stepson and his wicked wife. The men in this romantic fantasy are a mysterious lot. Dan Stevens (The Line of Beauty) plays Edward Ferrars, who wins Elinor’s heart early on but then inexplicably disappears. David Morrissey is stalwart Colonel Brandon, who overcomes a melodramatic episode of lost love from his past to fall head over heels for Marianne. Dominic Cooper is smoldering charmer John Willoughby, whom Marianne favors over the colonel.
Longtime Masterpiece fans will welcome the return of Jean Marsh, the house-parlor maid Rose in “Upstairs, Downstairs,” who appears in a quite different role in this production as Mrs. Ferrars, Edward and Fanny’s rich, imperious mother.
Masterpiece “Sense and Sensibility” is produced by the BBC and WGBH/Boston.
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