It would be foolhardy to say that any one adaptation of a work of classic literature is *the* definitive one, but it’s still a tough ask for anyone to redo Sense and Sensibility. The 1995 version still lives large in the popular imagination and anyone taking it on invites comparison to Ang Lee for the director and the fearsome quartet of Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, and Alan Rickman for the lead four actors. It’s to the credit, then, of Georgia Oakley and her cast that they are not completely eclipsed by their predecessors, even if they still do, inevitably, fail to climb to their heights.
Stepping into Thompson’s shoes, Daisy Edgar-Jones (who I admit to being rather unconvinced by in most of her previous cinematic outings) gives her best performance since Normal People as Elinor Dashwood, the brains of her family, suffering for her ideals of pragmatism and ‘the right thing’. She shares a bright sisterly chemistry with Esme Creed-Miles as Marianne, more open and impetuous but just as likely to get deeply hurt, as the pair navigate love, disappointment, and (relative) financial hardships in the bucolic Devon countryside. As it rather should be, these two are the best things about this Sense and Sensibility, their bond consistently growing in complexity and emotional power from start to finish.
The men – George MacKay as Elinor’s soulmate Edward Ferrars, Herbert Nordrum (oddly not dropping his natural Norwegian accent at all) as the sturdy Colonel Brandon, and Frank Dillane as the dastardly Willoughby – are fun too, even if they fade more into the background here than they did 30 years ago. Meanwhile, Fiona Shaw of course steals the show as the ebullient Mrs Jennings, bringing as much noise and energy on her own as the rest of the cast does put together.
Oakley’s take on Austen, as adapted by writer Diana Reid, is more restrained and less joyful than Lee’s, and you feel that in both the performances and the style of the piece. This is a much greyer, cloudier, and earthier Regency England, and while the Barry Lyndon-esque commitment to all natural light is admirable, the loss of brightness is a sacrifice that drains some of the energy the film needs to fill its 2+ hour runtime. Oakley’s best idea, then, is filling many of her frames (some of which are really sublimely composed, especially the departure from Norland, which is shot to show the house fading into memory even while it’s still in the Dashwoods’ eyelines) with animals, from cats to dogs to horses to sheep to birds.
This uncontrollable, un-rehearsable *life* kicks the film into a more immersive gear as creatures snuffle around the humans’ feet, naturally bringing a vibrancy that the rest of the film is just a bit lacking in. 2026’s Sense and Sensibility is earnestly felt and made handsomely enough (the music is really great), but up against its own immediate predecessor, not to mention the new gold standard of ‘sisterly period piece drama’ that is Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, it’s too sedate to enter the genre’s pantheon.
