I keep forgetting to watch the Jane Austens that have been showing on the ABC on Sunday nights recently. Tonight I remembered, but I just had to walk away halfway through.

I accept that Mansfield Park isn't anyone's favourite Austen, and that Fanny Price really isn't anyone's favourite heroine. She's a mouse - she's fragile, and she's timid, and she's not witty, and she's rigidly well-behaved, and she disapproves quietly when other people aren't well behaved. She's the Cinderella of her household, overlooked and bullied, and she does very little to stand up for herself. I do like her, because when push comes to shove she does make a stand, very much against her nature, and she then accepts the punishment for that stand with utter meekness because that's the only way she could, but the important thing is the stand in the first place. And because, while she spends the entire book pining, she does it with dignity. And because she's human, and she almost breaks down, and she really does make Henry better than he was, more sincere, even though she doesn't make him better enough.

But. Yeah. She's not a sparkling character. I can see, even if I don't like it, that you might want to tweak her presentation a bit for an adaptation. But, the thing is, you can't, you really can't, make her an outspoken, glowingly pretty tomboy, and still keep her role and actions in the book unchanged.

It makes absolutely no sense for this tomboyish girl who runs around with her hair all down her back, and irritates her uncle at the dining table with questions about slavery, to be staunchly disapproving of the play her family wants to put on, on the basis that it's improper and her uncle won't like it. It makes no sense for her to find Miss Crawford's playfulness so alien. It makes no sense that nobody in the family really notices whether she's in the room, when she draws the eye with every head toss, every laugh, every unconventional comment.

Also, the hair. Really. I can't say with absolute certainty that a mid-nineteenth century girl would not wear her hair messily tumbled all over her shoulders. Even at a ball in her honour, although it seems very odd. But when she's the only one with the bright golden loose locks, when her more vibrant and charming cousins are so demurely scraped back - well, she just looks as though she's a modern girl who's been superimposed on top of a period picture.

She looks, in fact - and you would think that when you cast Billie Piper as a period heroine you might be careful of this - exactly like Rose Tyler, spat out of the Tardis into Edwardian England.

And Edmund, my god, okay, Edmund by his actions is not the most lovable of heroes. He's self-righteous and disapproving, rather like Fanny, and he's snared by the pretty girl who stamps all over his principles and makes no secret of it. Worst of all, he entirely approves the banishment and misery of his sister, after she falls from grace. You can get around all this and show us what Fanny sees in him if you make him earnestly appealing, but he really wasn't here. He was a prig. I just wanted Fanny to marry Henry Crawford.

Which brings me to the reason I watched this for an hour even while thinking all these things. Because yay, both Crawfords were awesome. If I'd thought there was the slightest chance they might mess with the ending and give us a Fanny/Henry alliance, I would have stuck it out. I especially loved the brother-sister scenes on their own, but the two of them were a light in the darkness in general.