Character at the heart of costume drama

Evening Chronicle (Newcastle, England), Dec 19, 2007

IT wouldn't be the holiday season without a good costume drama and this year the BBC are plumping for a new adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility.

The three-part series, penned by award-winning writer Andrew Davies, is different from versions we've seen previously, according to cast member Dominic Cooper.

"Spread across three episodes, this adaptation, directed by John Alexander, shows a more sexual and rich translation of the 1811 classic novel.

"When we were speaking to John (Alexander), he said he wanted to do something very natural and he didn't want it to be a stuffy costume drama. He wanted us to find the heart of the characters. They are wonderful bold creative roles and he really helped us play around with them."

The 29-year-old takes on the role of Willoughby, who captures the heart of the romantic Marianne Dashwood (Charity Wakefield) after rescuing her when she falls in the rain and sprains her ankle.

Marianne is heartbroken when Willoughby disappears and later turns up engaged to another woman.

"The way I tried to persuade myself he wasn't too bad was that he's a 25-year-old young guy and he genuinely falls in love with Marianne - he's not just doing it for one moment in time," he explains.

"He believes he will marry her but then he's given this ultimatum by his family and the option is to sacrifice love or have a fruitful life with a lot of money, so his choice is money. People do it now - you see it all the time."

Shot in Berkshire, Surrey, Buckinghamshire and Devon, Dominic reveals the cast and crew weren't always lucky with the weather. The hardest scene for him, he laughs, was the first one in which he enters the drama to find Marianne having fallen in the rain.

"We were shooting down in Devon and constant rainstorms terrorised the shoot, but normal rain doesn't show up on camera so we also had this huge machine sparying water at us," he recalls. The problem was the vertical ridge and then this ridiculous cloak that I had to wear that kept getting caught under my heel. I just kept falling head over heels. We did have a lot of fun," he grins.

Sense And Sensibility is on BBC One on New Year's Day.