Jane Austen die-hards: this documentary is unmissable ...Middle East

Jane Austen fans hardly needed more encouragement, but for the author’s 250th anniversary, the perennial Regency love-in has gone into overdrive.

Already underway is a series of country-wide exhibitions, festivals and heritage trails, and a new statue is due to be unveiled in Winchester – where she died in 1817 – this October. On TV, we have had Miss Austen, which starred Keeley Hawes as Jane’s sister Cassandra, while filming has begun on The Other Bennett Sister, centred on the overlooked Mary Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. Netflix recently announced another adaptation of that novel, written by Dolly Alderton, whose cast will include Emma Corrin, Jack Lowden and Olivia Colman.

In other words, we are not short on Austen content right now, so there is a risk that a fairly straightforward new documentary series might get lost. Which would be a shame in the case of BBC Two’s Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius.

Featuring contributions from writers, academics, actors and experts including Helen Fielding, Candice Carty-Williams, Tamsin Greig, Colm Tóibín and – for reasons unknown – Cherie Blair, the three-part series gleefully delves into the life and work of Austen, “the greatest comic novelist we have ever produced”.

The first episode takes us from Austen’s teens through to her late twenties, a period when she wrote Lady Susan, Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice, but remained both unpublished and – more worryingly for the time – unmarried.

The origins of Austen’s exceptional observational skills, dry wit, rebellious streak and ability to mine profound truths from the inner lives of her characters as much as from society itself are attributed variously to being the youngest of eight siblings, to the extensive family library and to the unwavering, and unusual, support of her father George.

While her brothers embarked on naval adventures, Austen was left contemplating her inevitable fate as a wife and mother. The arrival of her glamorous cousin Eliza, whose French nobleman husband had recently been guillotined in the Revolution, becomes the origin story for fabulous widow Lady Susan, while two major romantic heartbreaks – one after her suitor’s family disapprove and another after a tragic death – are credited with Austen’s determination that her characters should fight for the happy ending she had been denied.

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How to illustrate a documentary that largely relies on talking heads is always a challenge when there isn’t obvious footage to fall back on. Rise of a Genius opts for the dramatisation route that ends up in cringeworthy am-dram territory. But although there are too many close-ups of pen nibs scratching out inky cursive script, these scenes aren’t nearly as naff as they might be, largely down to them thankfully remaining free of any dialogue.

The documentary also serves as a thoroughly enjoyable trip through some of the best adaptations of Austen’s work, which here includes the fizzy brilliance of Walt Stillman’s version of Lady Susan, 2016 film Love and Friendship, and Joe Wright’s lush and heady take on Pride and Prejudice, which itself celebrated its 20th anniversary this year.

Of course much of this is well trodden ground: the desperation to get inside Austen’s own head (as she does her characters’) will seemingly never be sated, especially since Cassandra famously burned thousands of her sister’s letters after her death at 41.

But even if it’s not wholly revelatory for die-hard fans, this history of the author herself is a necessary companion to this year’s many celebrations of her works. Not only will it have you itching to re-read them, but the context of Austen’s real life reinforces her genius all over again.

Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius continues next Monday at 9pm on BBC Two

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