Everyone knows about Jane Austen, the acclaimed novelist behind works like Pride And Prejudice and Emma. But what about her sister? The life and times of Cassandra Austen is the Miss Austen trailer, shared ahead of the May 4 premiere of PBS Masterpiece’s new four-part series. Stretching across time, the story explores love in its many forms—a subject of which Jane is kind of history’s leading expert.
The Miss Austen trailer introduces an older Cassandra (Keeley Hawes, Bodyguard) as she drops in unannounced in the home of her late best friend to help comfort her grieving daughter Isabella (Rose Leslie). But Cassandra has ulterior motives for her visit: she’s on the hunt for a cache of letters from her sister Jane, which contain deeply personal information about the sisters’ lives. Discovering these old missives transports Cassandra back in time and into the memory of her own love story. All the while, she must attempt to help Isabella secure her own future lest she be doomed to a fate of lonely spinsterdom.
Based on the novel by Gill Hornby, the speculative fiction seeks to answer the question of why the real-life Cassandra Austen burned her sister’s letters after Jane’s death. “I was sent the first episode of Miss Austen knowing nothing at all about this story, and instantly I found it absolutely fascinating and charming. I think people will love it, because for anyone who is not aware of this backstory it’s almost like we are getting a new Jane Austen story in itself, and what a lovely surprise that is,” Hawes said in an interview with the BBC. “I also couldn’t read the script or the book without crying—it’s incredibly emotional and very relatable. This is a story about relationships and families and what people mean to each other, and how we experience love, loss and life.”
