I’m a pretty big Jane Austen fan – I re-read all of her books (and unfinished stories, and slightly chaotic juvenile writing) last year, which, it turns out, was pretty good timing.
Not only that, but the makers of the BBC Ella Bruccoleri hit are starting on a Persuasion adaptation, this time focusing on protagonist Anne Eliot’s sister, Elizabeth.
But even among this embarrassment of riches, Austen’s less well-known work, The Watsons, has remained unadapted for the big or small screen (though it seems that may one day change).
If it does, I reckon it’ll take viewers by storm; here’s why.
Amy Glover / HuffPost UK / The Folio Society
What is The Watsons about?
The incomplete book follows 19-year-old protagonist Emma Watson (yes, I know) as she leaves her aunt’s genteel home. She returns to her less-prosperous nuclear family after an unfortunate death and an even less convenient marriage.
The Watsons hits a lot of classic Austen beats. As with basically all of the Regency author’s biggest books, a precariously well-off young woman loses the fortune she had grown to expect. The ill fortunes of a patriarch render a household penniless; for the more cynical, or perhaps clear-eyed, of Emma’s sisters, the hunt for an eligible husband becomes rather sharp-fanged.
Inevitably, an unimpressed Emma ends up at the ball of a prestigious family’s home. Without meaning to (of course), she ends up impressing the big-name bachelor via his tutor. (By the way, this vicar/teacher is also that stalwart of the Austenverse: not since Fleabag has a woman been so obsessed with hot priests).
We don’t know how the story ends. Austen sadly did not complete it. And while her niece “finished” the novel in 1850, we’ll obviously never know exactly how the original author would have ended it.
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Right. So why should it be adapted?
Well, firstly, come on: it is a truth universally acknowledged that an Austen book in possession of a good romance plot line MUST be in want of a screen adaptation.
There has never been a TV or movie adaptation of The Watsons, though excitingly, screenwriter Andrew Davies seems to be working on something – at least, that’s what he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
You might think this would be a tricky task given that the book is unfinished. But so is Austen’s Sanditon, and that was the basis for another of Davies’ TV shows.
Davies wrote the beloved 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, which is widely considered the best-ever Austen adaptation by fans of the author (myself included).
We don’t yet know where the possible project may air or when it’ll come out, though The Independent says it’ll be a TV show.
Davies has already stated that “These young men and women in The Watsons… are very analogous to Made in Chelsea”.
But if it does come out, I’ll bet my bonnet on it being an absolute phenomenon.
