Sanditon – 8

Much of the charm is supplied by the charming Rose Williams’s expressive face, voluptuous body and bottomless pit of dresses, which materialize out of the blue. The rest comes from the smoky Theo James as Sidney Parker, the love/hate cynosure of Rose’s Charlotte. We get to know a dozen other denizens of, and visitors to, the rising beach resort of Sanditon, and they are all sharply delineated and sufficiently interesting. It is easy to fall into the world of Jane Austen’s fiction (easier than it was in the recent Emma), and if we feel cheated at the end (a manufactured tease designed to permit a second season), that is a compliment to what we know from reading Austen, particularly Pride and Prejudice, in our pasts. Once again it was our affection for the female lead that made us race through eight episodes.