BRISTOL, England — Three hundred candles reflecting off gold walls cast a rich, hazy glow upon the dancers, who squealed with excitement as they changed partners in a boisterous round. To the side, a beautiful young woman locked eyes with a tall, handsome man. But before he could approach her, another suitor stepped in and asked, “May I have the pleasure?”

As she extended her hand, he walked into a tall light, ruining the take and sending the cast into hysterics. “I don’t think Jane Austen wrote it like that,” a cameraman said.

In fact, although the balls, courtship, love and obstacles will feel familiar to Janeites the world over, there isn’t much of “Sanditon,” a new eight-part Austen adaptation arriving Sunday on PBS’s “Masterpiece,” that was taken directly from the author’s writings. “Sanditon,” which was filmed here last June and premiered in Britain in August, is based on Austen’s final, unfinished work, a book relatively unknown even to fans of her six much-filmed completed novels.

Austen had written only 11 chapters of “Sanditon” and had begun a 12th when, suffering from an unspecified illness, she stopped writing on March 18, 1817. Four months later, she died at age 41, and it was only in 1925 that the story was published in its partial form.