'Mansfield Park'
TELEVISION REVIEW
It's hard not to wonder, three weeks in, if PBS' decision to air "The Complete Jane Austen" in single-episode weekly installments does a disservice to its subject. As early scenes of "Mansfield Park" unfold there is no denying that the bloom has faded a bit from the rose. The manor houses, the décolletage, the inevitable brass candlesticks do not provide quite the cozy respite they once did. The characters too seem a bit worn about the edges: Here is the spirited but disenfranchised heroine, the noble man she loves but seemingly cannot have, the scheming female friend, the charming rake, all vying for income and position with marriage based in love being the ultimate and elusive prize.
So one can be forgiven a little armchair psychoanalysis -- is a country walk in Austen ever just a country walk? And why are all the rakes and rogues instantly identifiable by the wildness of their hair?
But it would be a shame to take what may be a flaw in the concept out on its parts. As itself, "Mansfield Park" is as charming an adaptation of the novel as one would wish, and if American television viewers can find value in weekly weigh-ins of the morbidly obese or soap operas thinly disguised by surgical scrubs, they can certainly look past the repetition of skirt-trailing picnics and thundering carriages bringing dire messages in the middle of the night.
At age 10, Fanny Price (Billie Piper, formerly of "Doctor Who") is sent by her poverty-stricken mother to live with her rich relations, Lord and Lady Bertram. Growing up shy but loyal among her more capricious cousins, Fanny has but one true friend -- her cousin Edmund (Blake Ritson). Not surprisingly, she falls in love with him; also not surprisingly, there is an obstacle, in the slender, scheming form of Mary Crawford (Hayley Atwell). Mary and her brother Henry (Joseph Beattie) are a fine pair of Austenian villains, insinuating themselves into the hearts of Mansfield Park in hopes of marrying up. Aided by Tom, the slightly debauched but still lovable older Bertram heir (James D'Arcy), the Crawfords are soon fixtures at Mansfield Park, making poor Fanny feel every inch of her poor relation status.
