Jane Austen

It’s 1830, and Jane Austen has been dead for over a decade. Alive and kicking, though, is her sister Cassandra, who will later take the decision to burn a huge portion of Jane’s letters. The four-part series, an adaptation of Gill Hornsby’s novel of the same name, uses Cassandra’s decision to explore the friendship, romance and regrets that shaped the Austens’ lives.

The novel, written only months before Austen’s death, was never finished and consists of just eleven chapters.

The adaptation has been extended into an eight-part series starring Rose Williams (Curfew), Theo James (The Divergent series), Anne Reid (Last Tango in Halifax) and Kris Marshall (Death in Paradise).

Williams plays Charlotte Heywood, an impulsive and unconventional young woman who moves away from her rural hometown to the coastal resort of Sanditon, which is trying to reinvent itself as a fashionable retreat.

Sanditon, written just months before Austen’s death in 1817, tells the story of Charlotte Heywood, an impulsive and highly spirited young woman, and her spiky relationship with the wild and charming Sidney Parker.

After an accident sees the Heywood family transported from the rural hometown of Willingden to the up-and-coming seaside town of Sanditon, Charlotte is exposed to the intrigues of a town on the rise, and the people whose fortunes depend on its commercial success.