The Independent is celebrating the greatest TV moments of the year so far, from the ones that got the nation talking to the scenes that moved us or made us laugh. In a series of articles running this summer, insiders share the part they played in making them happen. She might not have been great at playing the piano but did she really deserve to be humiliated by her own dad in front of an entire ball?
Thankfully, Pride and Prejudice’s most overlooked character got a story of her own in The Other Bennet Sister earlier this year, the BBC’s exquisite adaptation of Janice Hadlow’s 2020 novel – and this time round, she got to be the heroine. This Jane Austen homage proved a hit with audiences as the Beeb’s biggest launch of a new drama since May 2025, and scholars embraced it too. Plans are now afoot for a Christmas special.
There was something so winning about the show, which my colleague Helen Coffey brilliantly described as, “the perfect antidote to all that climbing-the-walls steaminess and uninhibited shagging” in recent period dramas. And one grand gesture in particular, which offered a nostalgic throwback to the now iconic 1995 Pride and Prejudice adaptation. Yes, that’s right, Mary Bennet – so charming played by Ella Bruccoleri – found herself in a lake surrounded by not one, but two wet-shirted suitors.
The sweet, sensible Mr Haywood (Donal Finn) was rowing her around, reciting poetry, ready to declare his love, when they were rudely interrupted by the rakish Charles Ryder, whose attempts to enter the boat ended up with Haywood toppling out of it. Colin Firth, eat your heart out (times two). Bruccoleri talks us through what it was like to film one of the most memorable scenes of the series, who she was channelling as her two co-stars shepherded her back to the shore, and why the scene was such an important part of Mary’s journey.
Ryder just shows up at this remote lake in the Lake District, and suddenly he’s wading towards them. And yet both seem to somehow make sense, and I like that about the show, how it treads the line between quite sincere, earnest, dramatic moments and quite silly comedy.” “It was a beautiful day. It was one of my favorite days on set because it was just baking hot and Donal and I were mainly just on a boat by ourselves in the middle of the lake all day.
We were given a radio so that they could communicate with us, so we felt like we weren’t even being filmed really, because we were just having fun rowing on the lake all day. Indira Varma [who played Mary’s Aunt, Mrs Gardiner] showed up to set early so that she could go for a swim, and people were genuinely swimming in the lake between takes, so it was really nice.” “It became quite stressful because the crew were supposed to shoot it on a different lake where they could anchor the boats to the bottom of it. And then at the last minute, they tested the water and couldn’t use it, so then we had to use a different one.
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