A good try, but a bit too Austen-ish

When adapting a Jane Austen novel, the trick is to not be too … well, Jane Austen-ish.
Keep her plot and her sharp sense of character, but relax her stiff, centuries-old dialog.
Lately, several projects have done this quite well. The newest one, however, is a decent attempt that’s sometimes buried in Austen excess.
That’s “Sense and Sensibility” (shown here), at 8 p.m. Saturday (Feb. 24) and 5 p.m. Sunday on the Hallmark Channel. It’s of special interest because it:
— Wraps up a four-Saturday stretch of new, Austen-related films. This is the only one that directly uses one of her stories.
— Continues the Mahogany productions, which give Hallmark some Black-oriented films. That started in August of 2022 with “Unthinkably Good Things,” which was a cut above the Hallmark standard; this is the seventh one.
That combination – Black actors and Georgian-era society – works fine, actually. Austen’s final, unfinished novel (“Sanditon”) had a Black woman as its wealthiest character; the imaginary “Bridgerton” world flows easily with Blacks and whites.
In this case, there are plenty of skilled Black actors to take the lead roles. Deborah Ayorinde plays the diligent Elinor and Bethany Antonia is her flighty sister Marianne; in the 1995 film, those roles went to Emma Thompson (who wrote the script) and Kate Winslet. Akil Largie plays the sturdy Colonel Brandon.
The movie has plenty of white villains and Black victims, but it sometimes flips that. We see scheming Blacks; we also see Dan Jeannotte, who is white, as the stammering, well-meaning Edward – a role once perfected by Hugh Grant.
The performances are fine, but the dialog is sometimes impossible to conquer. Maybe people did talk this way in 1811,but the words now seem stiff and contrived; a good love story skids off toward a so-so soap opera.
“Sense and Sensibility” has lush costumes, fine settings and a good ending. Along the way, however, it could have used some sensible rewrites.