A lot of readers find Fanny price boring, and she is by our modern standards - delicate, docile, good, quiet and uncomplaining. However, if you are going to make a film of this novel, then changing her character this much is cheating. If you don't like the main character in a story, then it's best to leave it alone. Billy Piper was dashing about the corridors and gardens of the screen Mansfield Park like a child who has eaten too many E-numbers. In the novel, Sir Thomas punishes Fanny for her first ever refusal to do everyone's bidding by sending her home to her original rather lowly home in Portsmouth. It is this circumstance that almost persuades her to change her mind. In this adaptation we are asked to believe that it is a punishment for her to be left alone with the free-run of a stately home whilst her aunts, one indolent, one spiteful, and her overbearing uncle go away on a trip - some punishment! Any good points? Well Blake Ritson (Edmund) is cute, lovely brown eyes. Douglas Hodge is convincingly scary and domineering as Sir Thomas. And for once, Mr Rushworth isn't played like a village idiot, making it possible to believe that the family would have agreed to Maria's marriage to him. The other adaptations in this series (so far) are better - Persuasion and Northanger Abbey.