Jane Austen fans, rejoice! “The Other Bennet Sister,” adapted from Janice Hadlow’s 2020 novel about the overlooked Mary Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, is now streaming in North America.
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The 2026 miniseries, written by Sarah Quintrell and directed by Jennifer Sheridan and Asim Abbasi, begins with the familiar beats of Austen’s beloved classic, but soon diverges to trace Mary’s (Ella Bruccoleri, Call the Midwife) journey from neglected younger sister to the empowered protagonist of her own story.
Thank you to BritBox and to the cast for talking with us. Here’s our review.
The Other Bennet Sister (2026) is AVAILABLE to STREAM
10 episodes, Rated TV-G
Available May 6, 2026: 10 30-minute episodes released 3x on premiere, then weekly on Wednesdays
In a nod to the opening lines of Pride and Prejudice, “The Other Bennet Sister” begins exactly where we imagine it will: Mrs. Bennet (Ruth Jones, Emma) eagerly announces that Netherfield Park is let at last to an eligible bachelor. But then we get a glimpse of how the show will reexamine the familiar classic: Mary steps in to describe her parents’ early courtship and marriage in a witty voiceover, alerting us that this will be very different from the story we all know. Her four sisters are quickly summed up: Jane (Maddie Close, Sunflower Child) is beautiful, Lizzie (Poppy Gilbert, Sherwood) witty, Kitty (Molly Wright, The A Word) well-humored, and Lydia (Grace Hogg-Robinson, An American in Austen) spirited. But, Mary wonders, where does she fit in?
The Mary Bennet of Austen’s original novel is a serious stick-in-the-mud, most memorable for performing a dirge at a Netherfield gathering that jeopardizes eldest sister Jane’s chances with her wealthy paramour. In the early episodes, writer Sarah Quintrell retraces the plot beats of Pride and Prejudice, while exploring Mary’s motivations for the choices she makes in the novel. It’s a clever twist that immediately builds sympathy for the girl who’s constantly told she’ll never be as witty or beautiful as her sisters.
Ella Bruccoleri’s Mary struggles to separate herself from the weight of her mother’s limited expectations. Determined to stand out and earn some kind of affection from her mother, Mary decides “to deliberately brand herself as the intellectual one in the family,” Bruccoleri explains. But this backfires, too. Viewing Mary as both a potential rival and the oblivious butt of a joke, her friends and family members continually sabotage her attempts to secure a comfortable marriage.
By the end of the second episode, all of Mary’s sisters have married and left home, and her father (Richard E. Grant, Gosford Park)—the only sympathetic member of her family—has died, leaving her alone with her mother. To make matters worse, Mr. Collins (Ryan Sampson, The Frankenstein Chronicles), Lizzie’s rejected suitor and the inheritor of the Bennet estate, gives Mary and her mother two weeks to vacate their family home. Life looks bleak.
This is where “The Other Bennet Sister,” having dispatched with the familiar beats of Austen’s novel, truly finds its rhythm.
Mary’s aunt and uncle, the Gardiners (Indira Varma and Richard Coyle), invite her to stay with them in London, where she’ll tutor their three children and get a taste of the world beyond the countryside. Though Mary’s initial lessons fall flat and she’s convinced she’ll never fit in, the gentle guidance of her aunt and warm generosity of her uncle slowly begin to wear down her defenses. Parties and outings with their close friends introduce Mary to a world of fellow intellectuals who share her interests. While it would be easy for the creators to fall back on familiar tropes of romantic period dramas, they choose a more unconventional route.
Part of the joy of “The Other Bennet Sister” is getting a glimpse of everyday family life that rarely appears in other Austen adaptations and Regency dramas that focus on the marriage market. Mary and the Gardiners play games and hike in the Lake District in scenes that feel lived-in and authentic. Quintrell’s script keeps the dialogue fresh, and there’s a timelessness to Mary’s story that will compel viewers. “It’s a story of coming of age when you’re the outsider…and on some level I think we all feel that [way], that everyone else is getting it right and we’re not,” Quintrell says. “It’s a really unusual story, one that we haven’t really examined, and it just happens to be set in this really familiar world and skewed through a period lens.”
Yet this coming-of-age story is not without its romance. Before she knows it, Mary has two potential suitors vying for her affection: the bookish lawyer Tom Hayward (Dónal Finn, Young Sherlock), a friend of the Gardiners, and the fun-loving Mr. Ryder (Laurie Davidson, Mary & George), who may inherit a small fortune. Each man offers Mary a different potential future. “Ryder and Hayward are not really competing for the same bits of Mary,” Davidson says, chuckling. “They bring out different parts of her personality and the thing that they share with her is unique in itself.”
Adds Finn, “They both start from a place of very pure friendship.” Indeed, the focus is less on the romance—although that resolution, when it arrives, is deeply satisfying—and more so on Mary’s personal growth as she responds to each new person she meets.
The actors, like the series’ creators, were conscious of not falling into familiar clichés. “I still found myself guilty of going down the route of making Ryder a bit of a cad,” says Davidson, and indeed, Ryder walks a fine line between devil-may-care bachelor and a man who genuinely cares for Mary. “I had to keep reminding myself that it was a much more interesting choice for that not to happen.” And while the series does include romantic plotlines, Bruccoleri and the directors were careful to keep Mary true to herself. “I felt really conscious of losing Mary in those [romantic] moments,” Bruccoleri explains. “Asim [Abasi, the second block director] said let’s just try and make sure we hold on to who she really is… [We wanted to] make sure that it’s still Mary and that she’s still got all her bristles and she’s still incredibly strong and incredibly powerful.”
That is the real challenge for Mary: to grow, to come to accept herself as she is, and to forge a life on her own terms. After a lifetime of being told she’s inadequate, it’s difficult for Mary to trust herself. But with the unexpected insight of Mr. Collins, Mary realizes that “our happiness is in our own hands,” and she begins to shape the future she wants.
“The Other Bennet Sister” is a deeply emotional, satisfying sequel to Pride and Prejudice, one that gives Mary the full life she deserves.
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The Other Bennet Sister (2026) is AVAILABLE to STREAM
10 episodes, Rated TV-G
The Other Bennet Sister: A Novel is HERE
Abby Murphy is the author of two young adult historical/historical fantasy novels, and is currently working on a dual-timeline historical novel about the Greenwich Village folk music revival. A member of SCBWI and The Historical Novel Society, she is represented by Laura Crockett of Triada US Literary Agency. Visit Writing in the Kitchen Sink, Abby’s Substack filled with her musings about books and the writing life.
If you enjoyed this post, see Movie Lover’s Guide: Sense and Sensibility, 30 Period Romances You Haven’t Seen, and 20 Period Romances: Amazon Prime. 