The Austen Affair

Two feuding co-stars in a Jane Austen film adaptation unexpectedly travel back in time to the Regency Era, in this delightfully clever and riotously funny debut.

Tess Bright has landed her dream role starring in a film adaptation of Austen’s Northanger Abbey. It’s not just the role of a lifetime—it’s also her last chance to prove she’s a serious actress after being fired from her last TV job—and more importantly, it’s her opportunity to honor her mom, who was the biggest Austen fan ever. But she has one obstacle in her way: Hugh Balfour, a tall, annoyingly handsome and serious British method actor with BAFTA nominations and the kind of privileges Tess has never enjoyed. Hugh wants nothing to do with Tess (whose Teen Choice Awards somehow don’t quite compare to his pedigree). Hugh is a type-A, no-nonsense, Royal Academy prodigy, whereas Tess is big-hearted, a little reckless, and admittedly kind of a mess. But their film needs chemistry—and Tess’s career depends on it.

Sparks fly, but not at all in the way Tess hoped when an electrical accident sends the two feuding co-stars back in time to Austen’s era. Two hundred years in the past, with only each other to rely on, Tess and Hugh must ad-lib their way through the Regency period in order to make it back home—and hopefully not screw up history along the way. But if a certain someone looks particularly dashing in those nineteenth-century breeches… well, Tess won’t be complaining.