Carrie Cracknell’s controversial Netflix modernization. Fourth-wall-breaking, tonally divisive — the Austen adaptation Austen readers most wanted to defend the novel from.
| Dakota Johnson | Anne Elliot |
| Cosmo Jarvis | Captain Frederick Wentworth |
| Henry Golding | Mr. William Walter Elliot |
| Richard E. Grant | Sir Walter Elliot |
| Mia McKenna-Bruce | Mary Musgrove |
| Nikki Amuka-Bird | Lady Russell |
| Edward Bluemel | Charles Musgrove |
| Yolanda Kettle | Elizabeth Elliot |
Anne Elliot speaks directly to camera throughout, in the manner of Fleabag. Reviewers split sharply: some found Johnson’s line readings charming; many Austen readers found the technique fundamentally incompatible with a novel whose central drama is what Anne cannot say.
Lines like “we’re worse than exes — we’re friends” and Anne drinking from the bottle in a bathtub provoked particular ire. Defenders read these as deliberate translations of Anne’s interior voice. Detractors read them as anachronism for its own sake.
Rotten Tomatoes critics around 30%; The Guardian called it “a disaster of anachronistic dialogue”; Variety argued the modernization undermined the novel’s “core dramatic tension” of constraint. Audience scores were not noticeably better than critic scores — unusual for Netflix originals.
Whatever its merits, the 2022 Persuasion is the first Austen film made under the streaming-era assumption that period costume drama needs to be reinvented for younger viewers. That assumption will be tested again. This film’s commercial-but-not-critical position will inform how the next ones are made.
The 1995 Roger Michell film with Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds is the version most Austen readers recommend — quiet, autumnal, anchored by Root’s extraordinary stillness. The 2007 ITV film with Sally Hawkins is also widely admired.
See the full table of every screen version on the novel page itself.
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