Mansfield Park is the book I know least about, and the one I’ve seen least performed, so I’m not even terribly clear about the plot details, never mind nuances of dialogue use and so on. This is a 6-part series, and after the first episode I really thought I wasn’t going to enjoy it much at all. But it grew on me, and by about part 4 I was really into it. With so much time, the story really was able to take its time and expand enough for me to understand the story and the characters better.

Let me talk first about Fanny and Edmund. I know it’s shallow of me, but I felt both of them were miscast on appearance alone. Nicholas Farrell (Edmund) has a wonderfully strong face, but it’s better suited to character roles than that of young hero. Sylvestra Le Touzel (Fanny) just didn’t fit my mental image of the character. With all the talk of her health, and not being strong, I always envisaged her as a dainty, delicate little thing, and Le Touzel is too robustly healthy, to my mind. See, I told you it was shallow. I have no criticism of their acting skills, although perhaps neither had quite the emotional range that was required at times of high drama. Fanny in particular was too often immobile (although that is no doubt how she was directed to act).

Of the other characters, Anna Massey stole the show as Mrs Norris, a wonderful performance, although it’s so well-written by the author that it would be a plum role for any actress. I also liked Lady Bertram (a minority view, I think). I wondered if her extreme indolence was either an illness, or perhaps a dependence on laudanum (opium). But I loved her fluttering hands and the tremor in her voice and her complete inability to do anything for herself. The contrast with Mrs Norris was delightful. I also liked Mrs Price in Portsmouth, although her husband was a dreadful caricature, and overacted to boot.

Another character who shone was Jackie Smith-Wood as Mary Crawford. I’ve never taken much notice of her in previous versions, or in the book, but here I felt her intelligence and underlying good nature shone through. I liked, too, that Edmund is finally turned against her by a want of principle on her part. It isn’t necessary for her to demonstrate it, but simply the opinions she expresses are enough to sink his esteem. Whereas Henry Crawford has to prove how shallow and stupid he is by running away with Maria Rushworth. To be honest, I always felt this was a flaw in the book, for surely Henry would never do anything to sink his chances of making a respectable marriage. I couldn’t quite work out whether he truly loved Fanny and might have been redeemed if he had married her, or if he just thought he was in love or was merely piqued because she wouldn’t have him. He turned back to his flirtatious ways soon enough when he was away from her. In this version, Fanny’s trip home is not so much a punishment for her ingratitude in refusing Henry, but an opportunity to see what she has left behind, and to reflect on her options.

Honourable mentions go to Bernard Hepton as a very gentlemanly Sir Thomas Bertram, and poor Mr Rushworth, a stupid but perfectly respectable young man, whose bewildered pursuit of Maria and Henry in the grounds of his house made me very sympathetic towards him. He really didn’t deserve what happened to him.

One surprising aspect that was done spectacularly well – the costumes. The men’s costumes in particular were glorious, perfectly fitted to their characters. I wasn’t too sure that Mrs Norris would wear quite such an old-fashioned style of gown, for it was a point of honour amongst the gentry to have the most fashionable attire that you could afford, but it rather suited her bustling nature to wear something so full-skirted and swishy, rather than the tight empire-line dresses, so unflattering to the older lady. Mary Crawford wore an array of wonderful clothes, sharply stylish, direct from the most fashionable modistes of London, which were a nice contrast with Fanny’s much plainer and more feminine gowns.

And a very small detail that absolutely delighted me – this version shows a proper, Regency waltz. We are so familiar with the modern ballroom waltz and the face-to-face positioning of the couple that we’ve come to expect it, but that’s not how it was when it first appeared. The couple stood initially side by side, or (more accurately) hip to hip, gazing into each other’s eyes, holding hands but with one arm raised, with a variety of changes of position during the dance, which might increase in tempo so the couples are moving faster and faster towards the end. A very different style of dance! It was lovely to see it done properly.

An excellent version, the only weakness for me being the miscasting of the lead characters.

These older series are interesting little pieces of history in their own right, and the differences between versions can be illuminating. This version is nearly forty years old, and it shows in some aspects – the sets and costumes, for instance, are far more stagey than modern TV, but the actors, brought up in the grand British traditions of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC, know how to enunciate properly so that the viewer doesn’t need subtitles to understand what’s going on.

Of the actors, the only one I recognised was Tracey Childs (Marianne), who was also in another 80’s drama, Howard’s Way. I thought she made an excellent Marianne, capturing nicely her over-exuberant and emotional personality. She was particularly effective in the distraught London scenes. Irene Richards, as Elinor, was less effective, I thought. She captured effectively neither the practical, down-to-earth side of her character, nor the deep-seated emotions bubbling beneath the surface. I also found her movements to be rather stilted, but perhaps that was an attempt to convey her repressed nature.

Of the minor characters, Mrs Jennings was given a much bigger and more sympathetic role here, turning her from a comedy figure teasing the girls about their lovers to a genuinely maternal person. I liked her the better for it, but it didn’t feel true to the book. The other characters were competent without standing out particularly. Lady Middleton had more of a role in this version, being far more lively than in the book (some versions cut her out altogether). Margaret was the one who got the chop here, but I don’t think the story was any the worse for it.

The one seminal scene by which I judge any adaptation of this book is the occasion when Elinor is called upon to tell Edward that Colonel Brandon has given him a living, so enabling him to marry Lucy Steele. The pathos in the scene, and the subtext which both the reader/viewer and the characters themselves are equally aware of, that Elinor and Edward are very much in love and Edward is only marrying to honourably uphold a longstanding and bitterly regretted engagement, makes it one of the most profoundly moving scenes ever written. It needs superb acting skills but no other embellishment. The Emma Thompson version captured this perfectly, while the 2008 version resorted to overacting and oozing emotionalism. This version is pretty good, too, and stuck to the original words for maximum effect.

The settings lost a certain wildness. Barton Cottage was chocolate box pretty, and nowhere near the sea, and Marianne’s propensity to walk in the rain was lost. I thought an opportunity was lost to portray the sisters’ characters through their clothes, but they seemed to wear very similar garments. Elinor’s in particular I felt should have been plainer, less decorated, to demonstrate her practical nature, and the frill of curled hair round her face was entirely wrong. None of the dresses looked quite right, to me. Maybe they economised by not using authentic materials, so that although they superficially looked all right, they didn’t sit or drape properly.

One aspect that bothered me a great deal was a certain degree of impropriety in the sisters. The number of times one or other of them was left alone in a room with a man was shocking! Elinor was constantly showing people out (that’s what the servants are for, dear), and when Colonel Brandon was brought into Marianne’s bedroom and then left alone with her – I clutched my pearls, I can tell you. But maybe all that was in the book, who knows.

A competent adaptation, I thought, and enjoyable to watch but not my favourite.