| By Anne Brodie |
BritBox’ six-month retrospective Austen Forever celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th birthday and her tremendous legacy is underway now. On offer are films of her best-known works like Emma, Pride & Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility and modern Austen-inspired films like Clueless and Bridget Jones’s Diary. The BritBox Original The Other Bennet Sister releases in the spring, but also available now is Becoming Jane starring Anne Hathaway, concerning an early pre-feminist who decides her own fate rather than became what her parents want when she meets a “roguish Celt”. And Alicia Silverstone stars in the high school hit comedy Clueless and Emma, with Gwyneth Paltrow as a lovelorn matchmaker. But it all begins with the documentary feature Jane Austen: The Rise of a Genius which sheds light on what drove her to become a writer, her inherent skill and how she drew from her family and friends and searched her own soul. Thanks to her keen interpretations became one of the greatest and most influential female writers of all time. Austen spoke for women who couldn’t or wouldn’t in the repressive Georgian society with her remarkable understanding of female psychology.
Here’s the 2026 schedule, fellow Austenites!
Streaming Now on BritBox
Emma
In Emma Woodhouse’s imprudent attempts to meddle in her friends’ love lives, she is counseled and criticized by her brother-in-law, whose attentions are motivated by more than just brotherly love.
Lost in Austen
A modern heroine threatens to ruin one of the world’s greatest literary love stories in this ingenious reinvention of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Mansfield Park
In Jane Austen’s witty Regency romance, impoverished Fanny is sent to live with her affluent uncle despite the disdain of her snooty relatives. Will her good nature win her a place in society… and love?
January 2, Persuasion
As one of three daughters of the wealthy Sir Walter, Anne is a privileged but lonely member of the English aristocracy. When her father leaves on a trip, he rents out part of his estate to relatives of Anne’s ex-fiancé, Capt. Frederick Wentworth. Though Anne demurred over the marriage because of Wentworth’s poor social standing and connections, he has since become very successful, and when he visits, Anne must confront the life she left behind.
February 6, Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility finds the Dashwood sisters in a pickle. Elinor and Marianne’s father has lost his fortune which means they have a lower chance of marrying. And her well-intentioned suitors are trapped by the strict rules of Georgian society and social graces and desire.
March 6, Mansfield Park
A poor relation with a talent for writing and an independent wit, Fanny Price is sent to live on the estate of a rich uncle who promotes her marriage to an equally well-to-do neighbor, but Fanny proves to have a mind of her own.
April 3, Austenland
Jane Hayes’s adoration of all things Jane Austen finds her spending her life savings on a trip to Austenland, an eccentric resort where guests experience complete immersion in the Regency era.
April 3, Bridget Jones’s Diary
A single modern woman in her thirties decides to turn her life around, beginning with a diary and romantic entanglements with two suitors.
April 3, 2026, Pride & Prejudice
Elizabeth Bennet meets Mr. Darcy and sparks fly. They have chemistry but his reserve blocks them.
Spring 2026, The Other Bennet Sister
Mary Bennet, the unremarkable sister in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice steps out of sisters’ shadows to find herself in Regency London and the Lake District.