'Sanditon' Season 2 Promises To Be "More Classically Jane Austen"

When Sanditon Season 2 was announced in the spring of 2021, the fandom was shocked and overjoyed. But into every life, a little rain must fall. Though the show was returning with stars Rose Williams and Crystal Clark as Charlotte Heywood and Georgiana Lambe, Sanditon's leading man, Sidney Parker (Charlotte's beau and Georgiana's guardian), would not. Actor Theo James was already cast as the lead in the BBC/HBO co-production The Time Traveler's Wife, which was in the middle of filming. He put out a statement wishing the production well, but it was clear his time at the seaside town was over.

But though it is a hallmark of Jane Austen that her heroines fall in love and marry their first true love, things aren't so straightforward in real life. And Sanditon, for all that it is based on the unfinished Austen novel, did try for a level of realism in its first season, tackling such subjects as sexual abuse by powerful men and the casual racism of the British upper classes. Keeping in the spirit of things, Charlotte would return to the seaside town of Sanditon in Season 2, with her now marriage-aged little sister in tow, and be greeted by a bevy of suitors to choose from.

Speaking at the Television Critics Association panel on Season 2, series writer Justin Young told the assembled reporters, "I think in some ways Season 2 maybe feels more classically Jane Austen than Season 1."