Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius, on BritBox

Watching this 3-part series, you might assume Jane Austen either committed murder or escaped from a serial killer. That is because it utilizes many techniques associated with true crime documentaries, especially the dialogue-free “dramatic” re-enactments, accompanied by breathless voice-overs. For Gen-Z’ers out there, Austen was actually a novelist. Academics, writers, and thesps associated with her work analyze her life and legacy in director-co-writer Ali Naushahi’s Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius, which premieres Friday on BritBox.

Like all great writers, Austen wrote about what she knew. Like many of her heroines, her family was upper-class, but just barely—and very definitely cash-poor. She should have been married off, but somehow it never quite worked out.

From a young age, Austen’s rector father encouraged her talent for writing, which was quite progressive of him, particularly for the time. Eventually, Austen’s fiction came to represent the family’s best hope for financial survival, especially for the unmarried or widowed women.

Naushahi and company do a great job covering the particulars of Austen’s dealings with her publishers, especially her shrewd power moves that ultimately made Emma a blockbuster. They also make a strong case for Austen as one of the first great innovators of the novel as a means of literary expression. However, they arguably inflate her status as a trailblazing woman writer. The truth is she had considerable predecessors, like Anne Radcliffe, Sarah Fielding, and Mary Wollstone. Plus, she was a contemporary of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, whose work might even be more influential than Austen’s.

There is a concerted effort throughout Rise of a Genius to use its subject to score as many identity politics points as it possibly can. Yet, it hardly seems worth the effort. If you cannot pick up on Austen’s social criticism from her novels, there is nothing any academic can say that would convince you. Indeed, the  quality of the assembled talking heads’ commentary varies widely. Ironically, some of the most insightful observations come from actors like Greg Wise (Sense & Sensibility), Samuel West (Persuasion), and Greta Scacchi (Emma).

Emoke Zsigmond certainly looks Austenian when portraying the author in the dramatic recreations, but since she never speaks, Naushashi largely just uses her as a prop—in much the same way Jane Austen criticized Georgian society for its objectification of women.

Granted, dramatic recreations have been used beyond the true crime genre. However, Graham Sibley and Christian McKay much more successfully brought their respective Presidential subjects to life in History Channel’s Abraham Lincoln and FDR, because they were allowed to contribute full speaking performances. Likewise, Charles Dance regularly delivered dramatic monologues in the persona of Michelangelo throughout Renaissance: The Blood and the Beauty. In contrast, Zsigmond must silently hover and fret.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of good literary history in Rise of a Genius. Except for Edgar Allan Poe, probably no other early 19^th Century writer has inspired as many homages. Despite its preoccupations, watching Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius will lead to greater understanding of her work and times. Imperfect but still smart enough to recommend, it starts streaming tomorrow (12/5) on BritBox.