This seemed somewhat like a Disney version of "Emma"--shiny, entertaining, and just a bit stupid. It left me with the impression that the people who made it hadn't read the book but had taken their impression of it from previous adaptations, especially in the first episode, which felt very little like Austen and quite a bit like "Vanity Fair" (in the film of which, by coincidence or not, the same actress played Amelia). I assumed the makers had intended to sustain this approach throughout but that about halfway in the original story had elbowed onto center stage. Then the serial becomes more faithful in spirit, and proportionately more involving.
Unlike some recent potted Austens, this production grants the story sufficient time to develop. Unfortunately, it squanders at least a third of it in unnecessaries: set-ups for scenes that didn't require setting up, bits of business that don't reveal anything, and bits of peripheral dialogue which, if one knows the characters from the book, tend to grate a little. As one example, most of the women often behave in a catty manner, smirking and rolling their eyes, even those for whom it seems out of character, like Knightley's sister-in-law and Emma's late governess.
In the role of Emma, Romola Garai also seems to take the variorum approach, synthesizing the performances of her predecessors. But this turns out not to be a bad thing, because these give her a reliable bead on the character, and she's skillful enough to knead them into an original and coherent portrayal. Hers is probably the most accurate Emma to date. Surprisingly, it turns out like a Regency version of Drew Barrymore, and just as irritating. This is no violation of the novel but, since the actress can't suddenly metamorphose into a different person, it diminishes the concluding scenes of the dramatization, where Emma reformed is nearly as unlikable as Emma heedless. So, while I sympathized with the mortifications the character underwent in the course of her moral education, I could feel no great joy when she attained her happy ending.
In the "Making of" featurette for the production, the producer calls it "an Emma for this generation." In such a context, "this generation" usually means teens. So it's odd that Garai is older than any of her predecessors in the part (that is, according to their official ages) and Jonny Lee Miller, in the role of Knightley, older than all but one. And he seems even older: he too seems to have collapsed the others' performances into his own, and to have resolved them for some reason into a state of perpetual ineffectualness, somewhere between Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton. To me he seemed the oddest casting of an Austen hero since the plodding Matthew Macfayden essayed the dashing Darcy.
The supporting performances were variable. I liked Louise Dylan's Harriet, who matched Knightley's summation of her in the novel (simple, artless, unpretending) and seemed at times about to evaporate into the ether. Tamsin Greig gives Miss Bates a unique but persuasive reading, as a melancholy compulsive, more like one of Dickens's spinsters. Rupert Evans makes a suitably Brad Pitt-ish Frank, so self-centered yet so engaging that one can't help both liking him and wanting to kick him. And Dan Fredenburgh makes the most of the chance to present Knightley's brother in full, for once.
Some other performances, I'm still undecided about. As Jane Fairfax, Laura Pyper, whom I'd remembered as rather Amazonian in the series "Hex," looks as fragile as a child, and arouses much sympathy, but behaves more like someone with a drug problem than an unhappy fiancée. Blake Ritson's performance as Elton, I felt, needed more direction. Admirably, he goes by the description in the novel (with women every feature works) but acts rather too scary for his calling and his congregation; and his later appearances (officiating at marriages, etc.) are too ill defined.
A few of the best roles are wasted. For instance, Mrs. Elton, who usually provides her portrayer with a meaty comic turn, becomes a mere snob in the hands of Christine Cole, or her director. And the casting of Michael Gambon as Emma's father seemed a pity: he's never bad, but a vast number of parts would have suited him better than this. From his playing, I couldn't understand what was going on with the character. And then he and Garai were saddled with some sentimental father-daughter scenes that seemed extraneous and out of keeping with Austen, like much else in this rendition.
