I had my doubts, as I said before, about the casting of Billie Piper as Mansfield Park's doormat-in-residence, Fanny Price, but this adaptation, at 90 minutes, had no time for that kind of subtlety of characterization. No, this Fanny was an energetic, romping, good-natured young girl, unafraid to let her face show everything she was feeling. Piper did very well in the part.

Blake Ritson was adequate to his role as Edmund, although he suffered from not being given enough screen time to adequately develop his character.

Hayley Atwell did better with Mary Crawford, doing a decent job, in the time she had available, of showing the sophisticated young woman falling into unwilling love with an unsuitable man. If the reasons why the lively Miss Crawford fell for the staid young Mr. Bertram were left unexplained, well, that's not the actress's fault.

Joseph Beattie's Henry Crawford had, comparatively, quite a lot of screen time. He was given ample time to make love to the unwilling Fanny. So much so that an uninformed viewer might have been left wondering how the heroine could have failed to succumb. If we were robbed of any scene that might have explained why a worldy almost-libertine might be so violently attracted to a shy young girl, well, that's not the actor's fault.

And there were clunkers in plenty. The memory of Mary Crawford pulling up her skirt to entice Edmund with the sight of her stocking-clad leg springs to mind--what were they thinking--but for the most part, the changes to the plot necessary to cram at least part of the 'action' into a 90-minute period were not offensive.

Except that....

The 90-minute format is kind of offensive in and of itself. It's bad enough trying to cram such subtle plots into two hours, but you simply can't strip Austen down to a 90-minute set of bones and expect much, if anything, of her original intent to remain intact.

I unwillingly accept that not all of her books can be turned into 4-hour or 6-hour miniseries (why not?) but so much distortion is involved in scraping down the plots enough to fit into a 90-minute period that a viewer unfamiliar with the books will likely be left wondering precisely why these characters act the way they do.

With another 30 minutes, maybe we would have been gifted with a scene or two showing why Edmund, worthy though we know he was, had the power to captivate Mary Crawford. And vice-versa--we could have been shown why and how the lively Mary had such an impact on Edmund.

With another 30 minutes, the almost-invisible Julia might have had the time to illustrate the complicated love triangle (quadrangle?) that led the characters into disaster.

With another 30 minutes, we might have seen that the cynical Henry Crawford was being unexpectedly caught by Fanny Price's understated charms.

With another 30 minutes, Fanny's temptation to give in to pressure, and gratitude, and accept Henry Crawford's proposal could have been included. But that would have required a different Fanny....

Granted, Austen's Price was not a heroine for our times (she wasn't even particularly a good heroine for Austen's times) but I'd love to see a decent adaptation of this book with an actress in the part capable of showing both Fanny's modest obedience and the backbone of steel underneath. Piper's Fanny was immature and willful. She fit well in this production because the pace of events left no room for anything else.

I expected little from this adaptation. Mansfield Park is my least-favorite of Austen's books, largely because I always want to slap Fanny Price and tell her to grow a spine, but Piper's energetic portrayal of Fanny eliminated that problem. Most of the rest of the casting was quite serviceable. If the actors were capable of more than they delivered, we'll just assume that we would have been able to appreciate that, had the production given us any time to know them. (The Crawfords did, in fact, have a charm and vivacity that brought the Bertram family to life, just as in the book. So much so that I find myself wondering if it was a fortuitous accident of casting.)

Against all expectation, I liked it.