Keeley hawes

It is a truth universally acknowledged that lazy journalists begin every piece about Jane Austen with the words ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged’, so I’ll fight the temptation. In any case, the Miss Austen at the centre of BBC1’s new Sunday-night drama isn’t Jane, but her beloved sister Cassandra, best known for destroying most of Jane’s letters. Given that this has rendered our knowledge of the woman’s biography tantalisingly sketchy, Cassandra has attracted her fair share of resentment from Janeites. But rather cunningly, Miss Austen both exonerates her and takes full advantage of the sketchiness: high-mindedly questioning our entitlement to snoop into Jane’s private life, while feeling free to

Crossfire was a three-part drama in more ways than one. Running every night from Tuesday to Thursday, it brought together a Die Hard-style thriller, an exploration of the complexities of family life (with particular reference to middle-aged womanhood) and a meditation on the nature of time. Odder still, it worked pretty well on the whole – though it was not without moments of frank implausibility. Keeley Hawes played Jo, whose decision to book a holiday in the Canary Islands for her family and two others seemed a good idea at the time. Granted, her marriage wasn’t in top shape, what with her habit of falling for any man who paid

A youngish couple leave London and drive off excitedly to make a fresh start in more rural surroundings. They demonstrate their happiness by laughing all the way to their new town, where a cheery sign on the outskirts reads: ‘Welcome to Midwich’. So what could possibly go wrong? In fact, even for viewers unfamiliar with John Wyndham’s famously spooky 1957 novel, from which Sky Max’s modern-day version of The Midwich Cuckoos has been adapted, it’s clear that something soon will. After all, a pre-credit sequence, set five years later, had shown the same couple cowering in fear before their five-year-old daughter. For now, though, while they marvelled at the idyllic

Misbehaviour is a film about the 1970 Miss World contest that was disrupted by ‘bloody women’s libbers’ — that’s what my dad always called them, anyhow — throwing flour bombs and shouting ‘we’re not cattle!’ as Bob Hope fled the stage in a panic and our televisions temporarily blacked out.Marvellous, I think now, although at the time I was probably as annoyed as my dad. I loved this show when I was growing up and wouldn’t have known there was anything amiss, as it was all so normalised, watched by a global audience of 100 million. Great family entertainment, I’d have said, now get out my way so I can