“Persuasion, the first production from PBS’ Complete Jane Austen, badly overadjusts, adding so many fussy modern flourishes and out-of-place romantic gestures it almost undermines the inherent beauty of Austen’s work,” writes Robert Bianco in USA Today. Laurence Vittes of the Hollywood Reporter disagrees: “Persuasion, the first installment in the new Jane Austen cycle…finds an excellent, demographic-widening middle road between the stiff, formal attempts of 20 and 30 years ago and flights of cinematic fancy like Patricia Rozema’s Mansfield Park from 1999.”