The Jane-o-sphere is all atwitter over last night’s premiere of the first new adaptation on “Masterpiece Theatre,” so I might as well put my two cents in.

It didn’t suck.

The problem with the third film version of Persuasion is that the second film version of Persuasion was such a brilliant effort that any remake is likely to be a disappointment. The 1995 film with Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds was cleverly adapted, beautifully shot, and very well acted. It was also groundbreaking in its use of realism, at least for a story set in Regency times, which is usually all ball gowns and country meadows. This Persuasion had grit. Even the leads were jolie-laide; when it came out on video, the cover image featured two conventionally pretty people, neither of whom had a role in the film. The cover has since been replaced with a picture of the real actors, the marketers having realized that the American public won’t run away screaming if they catch a glimpse of wrinkled skin or imperfect orthodontia.

Like the 1995 Persuasion and also like last year’s Pride and Prejudice remake, last night’s adaptation did not shy away from realistic portrayals, although there was rather less pig slop than in P&P. Anne Eliot was decidedly plain. Anne’s relations were positively ugly in manner, and the perambulations in the Pump Room showed how horrible it must have been to be enslaved by society’s strictures. All of these things worked for the film in the same way they worked for the precursor. One great departure was the choice of Rupert Penry-Jones for Wentworth, but although I appreciated the eye candy, I don’t think he generated the same heat and magnetism as Hinds.

Many of the minor characters were well-played. It must be hard to take a comic character or a villain and make it equally funny/frightening but somehow significantly different from the previous incarnation. I thought both of the Eliot sisters pulled this off quite well. The characterization of Mary Musgrove seems to be universally hated by the Internets, but I thought she was a scream. Anthony Head also brought something new to his role. He wasn’t just ridiculous; you really got a sense of a man coasting on his looks his whole life, and how that formed his character.

My main complaint, I suppose, is that it mostly felt rather flat. The good parts were too derivative but didn’t hang together well enough to make much of an impression. Anne’s “marathon” at the end was just silly. It wasn’t only that a young woman in her position wouldn’t run through the streets. You might break a rule like that to make an emotional point. But who decided that the last five key conversations in the book could all be relocated to the promenade, with Anne rushing to and fro to encounter whosoever might conveniently supply the next piece of information to further the plot? And why did she have to run in such an ugly dress? By the time she hit her mark for her love scene, the poor girl could barely breathe.

And the ending? Why on Earth would Wentworth have bought or even leased Kellynch for Anne? She seemed to prefer a quiet life, and from the looks her family gave him you’d think he would have put as much distance between himself and them as possible.

The previews for Northanger Abbey looked more promising, and that story isn’t plagued by the anxiety of influence, at least on the filmic front. Come to think of it, the novel wasn’t that great, either. No where to go but up!