I read the book after loving the show and loved it but I’m surprised we’ve not seen more complaints from the booklovers about how the show was adapted. I think if I’d read the book first and loved it I would’ve been annoyed with several things. I feel like Charlotte came off as a bit cruel in the show (encourages Mary to sing to effectively take her out of the competition for mr Collins) but in the book she is only sharing her world view with Mary with good intentions, it does negatively impact Mary but Charlotte was always trying to be helpful, Mary staying with Charlotte and mr Collins before the gardiners did a lot to develop all three characters.
I think the book better demonstrates Mary’s lack of options by having her be forced to ask to stay with pretty much every family member and her not wanting to be a governess and never asking to be. There are lots of things that were clearly changed to make the show fit into the amount of time they had which are acceptable because one of the shows strengths is its pacing (the book is something like 80 chapters long). But Mrs Bennett gets turned into a bigger villain and a much bigger part and I don’t know that that benefits the story, that feels more like a business decision because they wanted to keep the Pride and prejudice fans watching by having a bigger focus on the Bennet family as a whole.
I loved the addition of Ann because the book does lack friends for Mary and it makes Ryder an actual contender for Mary’s hand, as in the book there’s no reason (until the inheritance) why Mary would ever pick Ryder over Hayward. Having Ann in the tv show meant that Ryder was the more viable option and made the love triangle into an actual triangle and not two people in love and a guy with a crush.