The trailer for Sanditon is everything Jane Austen fans could want

Austen fans from all over the world have been waiting for a peek at the television adaptation of Sanditon. The wait is finally over: We officially have our first trailer.

Jane Austen fans, do you have your smelling salts and your fainting couches ready? Your poor nerves might be sent into a tizzy because there is finally a trailer for the PBS/ITV adaptation of Sanditon, and it is everything we could have asked for.

Watch the trailer for Sanditon here:

For those who are unaware, Sanditon is one of Austen’s unfinished works. She wrote eleven chapters but stopped in March 1817, most likely due to her illness. She passed away just four months later in July. Originally titled, The Brothers, the novel was renamed Sanditon when it was published in 1925.

The heroine in Sanditon is Charlotte Heywood, an unconventional girl who is played by former Reign star Rose Williams. Due to an accident with a carriage, Charlotte is brought to the coastal resort of Sanditon from her country town of Willingden. And from there, Charlotte gets to experience everything an Austen heroine must: love and intrigue, pride and prejudice, and every foible that the society of the time has to offer. Austen is nothing if not an expert at showing the good, the bad, and the ugly in the people her heroines are surrounded by.

Love comes in the form of Sidney Parker, played by Theo James, the elder brother of Mr. Parker who, along with his wife, brought Charlotte to Sanditon in the first place. Charlotte finds him very pleasing to the eye, if not a little aggravating. Are your Darcy/Wentworth radars going off, Austenites?

But Sanditon also covers one topic, Austen’s other novels do not: race. Charlotte, the Parkers, and the other inhabitants of the resort town soon meet a wealthy family from the West Indies, including a Miss Lambe, a young mixed race woman played by Crystal Clarke who Lady Denham (the Lady Catherine of this story) wishes her son to marry. As you can see in the trailer, Miss Lambe wants none of that and will have to fight for her life.

Since the book was never finished, it will be interesting to see how the writers wrap it up. The series will be aired in eight parts, but as of yet, there is no release date.

As an Austen fan myself, I could not be happier with how this adaptation looks. It is everything I want when I watch my Jane Austen adaptations, and the trailer gave me chills. I don’t even mind the modern music playing over it. It works.

Rose Williams looks like the perfect heroine, and Theo James looks great in a cravat. With Andrew Davies’ writing, we’re in pretty safe hands. He did give us the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and the 2007 adaptation of Northanger Abbey.

And with so many Pride and Prejudice adaptations coming in all different forms (not that I’m complaining), it’s nice to see a lesser known work of Austen’s being recognized and shared with a larger audience.

What do you think of the new trailer? Are you excited to see how this Austen novel is translated to screen? Let us know in the comments below!