The story, which was loosely updated in the movie “Clueless,’’ has Emma Woodhouse (Romola Garai) taking care of her father (Michael Gambon) now that her sister has married and moved away. But boredom and disconnection from her own emotional needs lead her into trouble, as she begins toying with other people’s romantic lives. She takes a young woman, Harriet Smith (Louise Dylan), under her wing and sets Harriet up with a young preacher, Mr. Elton (Blake Ritson), unaware that Mr. Elton is interested in Emma herself. She directs her arrows at another pair with equally disastrous results, all of which is seen and judged negatively by old family friend Mr. Knightley (Jonny Lee Miller).
All of the secondary characters are distinct and richly acted, not least of all Ritson as the impossibly vain and slippery Mr. Elton. But Garai (she was the young adult Briony in “Atonement’’) is the real attraction in this production. At moments she reminded me of Cate Blanchett, and Kate Winslet, and even “Masterpiece Classic’’ host Laura Linney, but then she clearly has her own particular charm and talent.
Picking up where Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Beckinsale (both in 1996) left off, Garai plays Emma as an intelligent woman with one or two conspicuous blind spots. Garai, though, emphasizes Emma’s likability more than her predecessors; she’s so devoted to her father, and so limited in her experience of the world outside her Highbury home, you want to overlook her manipulations and her snobbery. She has an extremely expressive face, one that betrays her every thought and renders her transparent. While she treats people as objects, we can see that she does so out of ignorance as much as anything more devious.
As Knightley, the man Emma doesn’t know she loves and the man who doesn’t know he loves Emma, Miller is a pleasing counterpart. He projects all the calm and centeredness that she doesn’t, and his expressions of anger are firm but clearly born out of caring. As the miniseries develops across four hours (two tomorrow, then one each following Sunday), Garai and Miller have the time to believably move the relationship from ignorance to knowledge, from an almost brother-sister safety zone to something more impassioned. They appear to appreciate and respect their characters’ journeys as thoroughly as we do.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit www.boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.
