Daisy Edgar-Jones Leads Next-Gen Sense and Sensibility — SkimNews
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- Daisy Edgar-Jones takes on Elinor Dashwood (with Esmé Creed-Miles as Marianne) in Georgia Oakley's next-gen adaptation, written by Diana Reid, where the sisters read like former flatmates rather than the 1995 Thompson/Winslet pairing
- Georgia Oakley's direction and Diana Reid's script deliver a 'downbeat, ruminative version' happening in 'cloudier weather' than the 1995 film and explicitly 'without the sugar-rush final wedding scene'
- The adaptation sharpens a 1995 under-emphasis: Caitríona Balfe's Mrs Dashwood is now pointedly insisting on moving to Devon 'rather than endure the indignity of her daughter seeming to be a gold-digger'
- Fiona Shaw's Mrs Jennings is called the 'scene-stealer' who 'brings up the voltage every time she comes on' and effectively anchors 'a far bigger role than Elizabeth Spriggs in the same part in 1995'
- Frank Dillane's Willoughby carries 'a certain amount of insidious charm, but also a sort of Uriah Heep smirk,' with George MacKay as a 'shy and decent' Edward Ferrars
- Herbert Nordrum's Colonel Brandon lands as 'an eccentric, stolid outlier' whose 'line-readings feel unengaged' and who 'doesn't seem to be that moonstruck by Marianne,' even as Eliot Sumner is praised for 'gender-challenging casting' as a 'icily' played Mr Palmer
Why it matters: The new adaptation trades the 1995 romcom's sugar-rush ending for 'austere, sober-minded' drama — but the casting of Nordrum as Colonel Brandon reads as an 'eccentric, stolid outlier' rather than a revelatory reinvention, leaving the gender-challenging gambits (Sumner, the sharper Mrs Dashwood motive) to do the heavy lifting on a remake whose creative risk is in its restraint, not its casting swings.
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