Subscribe or Log In to Anytime
Access audio & film from your favourite writers and thinkers
Give the gift of Anytime
Treat someone to a Hay Festival Anytime subscription

Janice Hadlow, Sarah Quintrell and Jane Tranter talk to Rachel Parris

Adapting Austen: The Other Bennet Sister

Hay Festival 2025, 

Join author Janice Hadlow (The Other Bennet Sister), screenwriter Sarah Quintrell (The Power) and executive producer and Bad Wolf co-founder Jane Tranter (His Dark Materials) as they discuss the challenges of adapting and reinterpreting Austen for modern audiences, in her 250th birthday year.

Following the announcement that Bad Wolf will adapt Janice Hadlow’s best-selling novel The Other Bennet Sister for the BBC, the trio will discuss their approach to reinterpreting Mary Bennet, the seemingly unremarkable and overlooked middle sister in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Described as a “fresh spin around the ballroom for one of Jane Austen’s most unassuming characters”, the ten-part drama is written by Sarah Quintrell and gives Mary Bennet the epic love story nobody predicted for her. They talk to author and comedian, Rachel Parris.