The Sense and Sensibility trailer will melt you with a saucy wink

We might be mid-heatwave, but the film that will keep us cosy this autumn has just dropped its first trailer – and Sense and Sensibility, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, is ready to truly serve its feral audience of fangirls.

And also ready to remind the world that the British truly excel at period dramas.

This is no Wuthering Heights wild interpretation, but the film, directed by Georgia Oakley (Blue Jean), looks like it has more than a whiff of award season prestige – while also offering up a few surprises.

It’s been over 30 years since the last big screen version of Sense and Sensibility, when Ang Lee directed Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and the late Alan Rickman in the Oscar-winning 1995 film.

While these are lofty heights to aspire to, this latest Jane Austen adaptation comes from Working Title and the producers behind 2005’s Pride & Prejudice – another highly acclaimed period drama, which was not only an awards darling but also offered fans a collective losing-their-minds moment over a hand flex from Mr Darcy, now written into romance pop culture.

Many had said that this Pride & Prejudice could never equal the iconic BBC 1995 TV series with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and yet it made its own delightful impact.

And now this first glimpse at Sense and Sensibility suggests it will do the same.

Sense and Sensibility’s first trailer harkens back to the rustic feel of the 2005 Pride & Prejudice – most welcome – right from the off, as it begins with Marianne’s (Esmé Creed-Miles) hand running through grass.

Quickly her close relationship with sister Elinor (Edgar-Jones) is established, as well as the Dashwood family’s stressful circumstances, after they are left without the inheritance of their late father thanks to their step-brother’s selfishness.

The cast also includes Outlander star Caitríona Balfe as Mrs Dashwood and Hamnet’s Bodhi Rae Breathnach as youngest sister Margaret, while Fiona Shaw crops up as Mrs Jennings, who is laser-focused on helping marry off the girls.

But an Austen adaptation can also live and die on the casting of its heroes – and here, George MacKay as Edward Ferrars is something of a revelation.

We see Elinor and Marianne peering out the window to clock if he is handsome before he introduces himself, looking suitably dashing in his Regency era greatcoat. Quickly the cautious Elinor is admitting, ‘I greatly esteem him’ (steady on).

Mr Ferrars was always an Austen character I could take or leave, entangled in an engagement that can make him unsympathetic – and rather feeble in the way Grant played him in the Lee adaptation, I’m afraid to say.

But MacKay’s version is one that seems more intriguing and surer of himself, even delivering a saucy little wink at one point. He’s proven himself a great actor time and again (Pride, 1917, Rose of Nevada), but Sense and Sensibility looks like the long overdue leading man breakthrough of his career. 

Elsewhere, Frank Dillane is the charming Mr Willoughby, who rescues Marianne when she falls – saving her life, Mrs Dashwood claims, while he twinklingly protests: ‘Not her life, good madam, merely an ankle.’

Norwegian actor Herbert Nordrum completes the main cast as the quiet, older Colonel Brandon, enchanted by Marianne and her spirit. But the trailer also teases a physical confrontation between him and Willoughby as Brandon is seen demanding, ‘Come with me,’ before seizing Willoughby’s lapels and shouting ‘Now!’.

It’s a moment that is sure to thrill fans of the book, who are aware of their backstory.

The snippets of Diana Reid’s screenplay also show a deft handling of Austen’s original text, peppering quotes throughout, and the trailer ending on Marianne’s perfectly understandable admission of her ideal suitor: ‘I require so much.’

This Sense and Sensibility looks set to deliver another classy, beautifully respectful Austen adaptation – with a welcome serving of yearning on the side – that will make its own mark.

Sense and Sensibility is in UK cinemas from September 25.