“It’s the most fun I’ve ever had on any job” Screenwriter Sarah Quintrell and Composer Anne Chemelevsky on the new BBC series The Other Bennet Sister

Colin Firth emerging soaking from the lake in the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is arguably one of the most iconic moments in British television, now the BBC returns to the world of Jane Austen with the brand new series The Other Bennet Sister. To find out more about the highly anticipated TV series, Magic Classical presenter Tim Smith chatted to the series Screenwriter Sarah Quintrell (The Power, His Dark Materials, Ellen) and Composer Anne Chemelevsky (Where Hands Touch, Maestra, To Cook a Bear) in his special series Soundtracking: Literary Romance.

Adapted from Janice Hardlow’s novel of the same name, The Other Bennet Sister follows Mary, the bookish and overlooked sister from Jane Austen’s iconic Pride and Prejudice. The series, which stars Richard E Grant, Ruth Jones and Ella Bruccoleri follows Mary Bennet on her journey of self-discovery and love.

Tim: Now you wrote the screenplay for this series, Sarah, where do you begin with something like that? Presumably you sit down and read the book.

Sarah: I mean, read the book over and over again, and then read around the book and then go back to Jane Austen's original work. And then Janice beautifully in her novel talks about the kind of the backdrop of the changing world of that era and brings in the romantic poets, the sort of “sex, drug and drugs and rock and roll” of their era. So I did a lot of reading around the romantic poets as well, and our lead character, Mary, who from the Bennett family, Pride & Prejudice, is quite bookish. So I did a lot of reading around the sort of works that she would've been reading, the histories and the various books that she would've read.

So lots of reading. Then I put it all down and then I jump off. Start writing.

Tim: And what about you, Anne? Do you go to the book first or, or do you go to the visuals once they've been created and, and Sarah's wrote the screenplay for them.

Anne: So I got the script first. I think I was sent the first five and it left me on such a cliff hanger that I went and got the book immediately to find out what would happen! But yes, mainly I started off with a script suddenly for the initial themes and then I got sent the episodes and I started working to the episodes.

Tim: Okay. So what can you tell us about the actual series? We're looking at Mary Bennett. She's the other Bennett's sister, as we say. It's from Janice Hadlow's novel. She's the middle sister, she's bookish, she's plain, that's fair to say. I can say that, can't I? And she kind of gets pushed to one side by the rest of the family, Sarah, doesn't she?

Sarah: Yeah, I think it's fair to say she's viewed as plain, largely because her sisters are all seen as being quite beautiful and good at everything, but a lot of it is about how she's seen by her family and her kind of need to break out of that and go out into the world and find her place. We start in the world of Pride & Prejudice, but Pride & Prejudice is sort of happening to our left, and we are with Mary Bennett very much in her point of view. And then we break out of the world of Pride & Prejudice, and it becomes a coming-of-age story really.

How do you come of age when you are the odd one out? How do you find your place in the world? This is a kid with no confidence, very low self-esteem. And she's a pedant, she's not interested in fashion and, and it's about really, it's a story of self-acceptance and self love. I think is the best way to describe it.

"How do you come of age when you are the odd one out? How do you find your place in the world?"

Tim: Anne, Is it fun composing music for a difficult character?

Anne: It's amazing. It's, honestly, it's the most fun I've ever had on any job I think. While she is difficult, she's also really relatable. I think everyone will see a bit of themselves in her. And she's so charming and lovable and at the same time, you almost kind of want to shake her a little bit as you go on in the story and I really felt like I was there with her right until the end. It was just a great experience for me.

Tim: How did it feel composing for the series, given the legacy of the BBC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice adaptation? You knew I was gonna mention this, didn't you? I mean, an iconic, an iconic score by Carl Davis and some iconic scenes in that series. Colin Firth going through the lake, but how did that feel then following on from that particular series? Was that always on your mind or do you just ignore that and put it to one side.

Anne: Of course, as a composer, it's kind of daunting to follow that. But for me, I was just really, really excited to be a part of it. I think that soundtrack for me, it's up there with Vertigo and Star Wars and Indiana Jones, all of the great soundtracks. I think it's just so brilliantly written. I really, really love it and I have like a really personal connection to it because you can probably tell English isn't my first language and when I was learning to speak English, everyone was telling me to read Pride & Prejudice, and I was good enough to understand the words, but I just didn't get the tone of the novel at all. It was completely over my head. Everyone's telling me “it's so good, it's so good”, and I just couldn't get what they were talking about.

And then, one of our teachers at school, I think brought the Pride & Prejudice on tape, and we watched it. And when that opening sequence with the embroidery and the music started, it was honestly like a light bulb moment. The wit and the irony and the satire, all of that came across in the music.

It was so brilliant, and I just got it. And then I read the novel again. And of course, because the adaptation is so close to the words of the book, it really helped me improve my English. And the more I read it, the more I loved it. So I feel very connected to that music, and I was just so excited to be like a tiny, tiny part of this new chapter.

"It was honestly like a light bulb moment. The wit and the irony and the satire, all of that came across in the music."

Tim: And did you at any point listen to any music from the period?

Anne: When I'm working on things I usually listen to nothing at all, to try and clear my mind. Otherwise, it's quite distracting. And I have a rule of terror in the house where no one's allowed to sing, around me or hum anything because it really drives me mad, I'm sort of intolerable really! But certainly prior to starting, I listened to a lot of Haydn and a lot of Mozart. When I was pitching for the series, I listened to the overture to the Marriage of Figaro a lot because I think it's got that really exciting drive to it and it's very serious, but really fun and very exciting.

Tim: Let's talk a little bit now about Mary and the journey she's on. She's on essentially a journey of self-acceptance, but there is some romance and this program is looking at romance and music that reflects that on film and television. So how would you describe Mary's love life in this series, Sarah?

Sarah: I think Mary's love, life's quite relatable in that she's very unsure and it's not sort of smooth and movie-like, I think we we're much more grounded and realistic in this story. It is almost as if the sort of perfect world of Lizzie & Mr. Darcy is over to one side. And we've got this very ordinary, more familiar version of a love story. But it's no less of a love story for that. I think it still is for her this big romance and I had to kind of walk a fine line between that being really important, but not being the whole of her story, if that makes sense.

Tim: And when you first saw the visual with the music, Sarah, what was your reaction?

Sarah: Oh, I mean, the music is so beautiful. And people often ask me about how you, especially with an adaptation, how do you give these characters their inner life that the novel gives them? And I feel actually like the music does so much to help that inner life of the character come out. This is an era where there was so many social niceties and, and everybody's very polite and the music can kind of really tell you how a character feels inside.

So that was brilliant in the storytelling and I just felt like the music brings it to life. It supports the stories. And it's funny, when actors do big romantic scenes, they often, I've noticed actors of all sorts of levels will often say, an experience will say afterwards, “Oh, I'm, I'm not sure I hit it.” And I think it's because when they watch those scenes, they've got all the music in there and the music does so much work. And when they play those scenes, it can feel quite cold and quite bare. And then suddenly you get Anne's score and I was lucky enough to get to get on Zoom and watch a bit of Anne working with the orchestra and I thought I'll just do 10 minutes and then two hours later I was like, “Oh my goodness, I really should do some writing.”

It was just mesmeric watching that process and seeing the visuals on the screen and these performances and how the. The orchestra felt their way through that. I was absolutely blown away by it.

_"This is an era where there was so many social niceties and, and everybody's very polite and the music can kind of really tell you how a character feels inside."_

Tim: Well I've only seen a small part of the series up to now, but it looked brilliant. Sarah, I mean, some top production going on here in addition to a top script and some top music of course. Just talk us through what we can expect. Do you think then great cast of course, Richard E. Grant, who is perfect casting, Ruth Jones, who I love, and she's brilliant and Ella Bruccoleri in the lead role. She's fabulous as well. There’s a real buzz about this, isn't there?

Sarah: There really is. And we were so lucky with the cast. Every single one of them, even our sort of day players, everybody came on board with so much love. And the crew, our director, Jen Sheridan and Asim Abbasi, they just brought so much love and joy to this. I've never been on a set like it, the first time Caroline Bingley was rude to Mary, the crew booed out loud.

"I've never been on a set like it, the first time Caroline Bingley was rude to Mary, the crew booed out loud."

That that's when you know these people they really like it. And often people would walk past a monitor and be like, “Oh, Mary, we all saw ourselves in her”. It was extraordinary the conversations I had with crew and actors. So I think if an inch of the love and the joy that we had for it while we made it comes across on screen, I think you should be in for a treat, hopefully.

Listen to the full episode of Soundtracking Literary Romance here