Spanning a 200-year gap, Hallmark meets Austen

Two fonts of romance – Jane Austen and the Hallmark Channel – are finally together.
The channel has been around for 31 years, the Austen books for 223. Both have wise women fall in love (carefully and chastely) with sturdy men.
Now – each Saturday in February – Hallmark has an Austen-oriented tale.
“She was so ahead of her time,” said Deborah Ayorinde, who stars as Elinor in a “Sense and Sensibility” remake (shown here) on Feb. 24, adding: “A lot of the things that Elinor was dealing with, I felt like I could relate to.”
Then again, Ayorinde, 36, had never actually read an Austen novel. That’s one of the challenges for Hallmark, which is trying to be more varied in tone, setting and era.. “Sense” is “Hallmark’s first period adaptation,” said Lisa Hamilton Daly, the channel’s head of programming. It wraps up a stretch that has:
— “Paging Mr. Darcy,” which debuted Feb. 3 and reruns at 10 p.m. Feb. 17. At an Austen convention, a scholar meets the guy who’s portraying the “Pride and Prejudiice” hero.
— “Love & Jane,” 8 p.m. Feb. 10, rerunning at 3 p.m. Feb. 11. Alison Sweeney plays a romantic literature buff who gets to meet her favorite author.
— “An American in Austen,” 8 p.m. Feb. 17, rerunning at 6 p.m. Feb. 18. A modern Austen librarian and novelist finds herself transported into “Pride and Prejudice,” the tale centering on Elizabeth Bennett. It “stars the very aptly named Eliza Bennett,” Daly told the Television Critiics Associatiion. “We did not make that up.”
— “Sense and Sensibility,” 8 p.m. Feb. 24, with a thorough Austen immersion.
Here is the Regency Period, with 68 specific costumes. “It’s all in the details,” said producer Tia Smith, “from knowing what type of food to put on the table to the proper curtsy to using surnames.”
For much of that, she turned to Vanessa Riley, whom costume designer Kara Saun calls “our Alexa of Regency.”
For an Elinor-Edward, Saun said, the director suggested Edward remove his vest. “All of a sudden, I heard (Riley) screaming from the back, ‘He can’t take off his vest.’’ In the Regency days, that was considered foreplay.
This “Sense” will look a lot like previous ones, with a key exception: It’s from Hallmark’s Mahogany wing, which focuses on Black characters.
That’s logical, Riley said. During Austen’s time, there were 15-20,000 free Blacks in London, some of them famous. In “Sanditon,” Austen’s unfinished, final tale, “the richest woman in the novel is a Caribbean woman.”
Riley’s dad is also Caribbean and both her parents loved books, giving her a literary background ranging from James Baldwin to Jane Austen. Her mother encouraged her writing … but advised her to get a job that makes money.
So she got a doctorate (mechanical engineering) and became an engineer, a wife, a mom and “from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., I wrote. So I actually have about 25 novels out.”
Some may reach Hallmark. For now, she’s aiding the channel’s Austen immersion.