From The Telegraph today:
“Those who feel a little Gyles Brandreth goes a long way may want to steer clear of Channel 5 for the next few Wednesdays, as he explores the lives and works of Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters. That said, he’s on relatively restrained form for this opening episode, reining in the archness and not dressing up any more than, say, Lucy Worsley might on a similar assignment to visit key locations in Jane Austen’s life and talk to the experts.
Along the way he encounters the scribblings of a teenage Jane that showcase her imagination already at work, splicing her name with a fictional person called Fitzwilliam. He takes the waters in Bath just as she did while accompanying her brother in search of a cure for his gout, and joins Austentatious, the popular Jane-inspired improv gang, for a skit, alongside more serious excursions into her political views and private life. None of it will come as news to hardened Janeites (a term popularised by confirmed fan Rudyard Kipling), but that’s hardly the point. Bursting with clips from the many Austen adaptations of recent years, this is literature done Channel 5 style, and none the worse for that”