They took the germ of an idea, characters partially developed, and twisted it into a travesty. This took a very normal appearing Austen outline and made it as dark and wicked as possible.
All the tropes are there. The poor gentleman's daughter heroine and the arrogant rich love interest. His family is filled with stock characters: silly siblings, the elder brother who is a lovely man but is ruining his family's fortune with foolish investments. There's the cranky old rich woman who meddles in her relative's lives as well as those of her circle. The young, romantic girl destined to ruin herself. The handsome but lowly young man to attract Charlotte's fancy for a time. There all there. Unfortunately most of them are deeply unlikeable outside of the Parker family.
The heroine, Charlotte lacks every aspect of a gentlewoman. The love interest, Mr. Parker is fiery tempered with violent public outbursts. There's absolutely no reason they would be attracted to each other. For the first few episodes they followed the typical pattern of misunderstanding and then becoming friends. Then they turned that on its head by having Charlotte be part of Parker's ward's ruination.
There are step siblings in a quasi incestuous relationship, Charlotte seeing Parker nude and not being embarrassed, but bantering about it and so many anachronistic events your head will spin. There's a random sexual encounter between cousins outdoors, discussions of childhood sexual abuse, just everything an Austen novel is not.
I kept hoping they'd get this back on track but sadly, no.
They could have chosen to do this story using original characters and I have no idea why they did this. It's as bad as the adaptation of Mansfield Park made a few years ago that had the father of the family depicted as a rapist.
All the tropes are there. The poor gentleman's daughter heroine and the arrogant rich love interest. His family is filled with stock characters: silly siblings, the elder brother who is a lovely man but is ruining his family's fortune with foolish investments. There's the cranky old rich woman who meddles in her relative's lives as well as those of her circle. The young, romantic girl destined to ruin herself. The handsome but lowly young man to attract Charlotte's fancy for a time. There all there. Unfortunately most of them are deeply unlikeable outside of the Parker family.
The heroine, Charlotte lacks every aspect of a gentlewoman. The love interest, Mr. Parker is fiery tempered with violent public outbursts. There's absolutely no reason they would be attracted to each other. For the first few episodes they followed the typical pattern of misunderstanding and then becoming friends. Then they turned that on its head by having Charlotte be part of Parker's ward's ruination.
There are step siblings in a quasi incestuous relationship, Charlotte seeing Parker nude and not being embarrassed, but bantering about it and so many anachronistic events your head will spin. There's a random sexual encounter between cousins outdoors, discussions of childhood sexual abuse, just everything an Austen novel is not.
I kept hoping they'd get this back on track but sadly, no.
They could have chosen to do this story using original characters and I have no idea why they did this. It's as bad as the adaptation of Mansfield Park made a few years ago that had the father of the family depicted as a rapist.