COVER STORY : Sense and Bankability : Hottest name around? Try Jane Austen, 178 years after her death.

One can barely climb over a stile into an English country field these days without tripping over a film crew scurrying to adapt another Jane Austen novel. The work of this early 19th century, quintessentially English writer seems to adapt effortlessly to movies and TV miniseries.

As a result, there is currently a rush to film Austen, in much the same way that a flurry of film activity surrounded Edith Wharton’s novels a couple of years back.

In Britain, 9 million TV viewers were devoted to the BBC’s recent six-part adaptation of Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” a huge audience for an upscale period drama. The BBC’s previous attempt at her work, a feature-length version of “Persuasion,” won admirers and recently opened in U.S. theaters to good reviews. Her “Sense and Sensibility,” with a screenplay by Emma Thompson (who also co-stars), opens Wednesday.

But Austen’s 1816 novel “Emma” is currently the epicenter of the Austen adaptation industry. A Miramax film of “Emma” wrapped in England in October for release next year. Two British TV companies have “Emma” projects in the works: ITV plans a two-hour version for airing next year; the BBC is preparing a five-part serial, expected to arrive on TV screens in 1997. (To add to the sense of Emma-mania here, October saw the British release of “Clueless,” a comic satire about Beverly Hills high school kids, based very loosely on Austen’s novel.)

As one would expect, the prime movers of the Austen adaptations have been English. But Miramax’s “Emma” is a notable exception. The script is by an American, Douglas McGrath (he co-wrote “Bullets Over Broadway” with Woody Allen), who also directs. It stars Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role (employing a posh English accent) alongside British actors Greta Scacchi, Juliet Stevenson and Jeremy Northam.

Apart from his screen credits (he also wrote the 1993 remake of “Born Yesterday”), McGrath is a dramatist (his play “The Big Day” was produced at the Pasadena Playhouse three years ago) and a former satirical columnist for the Nation and the New Republic. He spent a season writing sketches for “Saturday Night Live.” Most important, he is a confirmed Jane Austen fan.

“I am a complete slave of ‘Emma,’ ” he says on a break between scenes in a leafy countryside 20 miles west of London. He then embarked on a detailed case for the superiority of “Emma” over Austen’s better-known novel “Pride and Prejudice.”

Miramax brass were so impressed by the witty “Bullets Over Broadway” script, they simply asked McGrath what he wanted to do next: “I said ‘Emma,’ and they agreed. I think they saw how much I loved the book. It’s so well thought out, accomplished and symmetrical. I first read it two years after college [Princeton] and I can’t understand why there was never a movie of it.” He frowned. “I hope I’m not about to find out.”

McGrath has been too busy making “Emma” to check out the competition. He has not seen “Persuasion” or the BBC’s “Pride and Prejudice.” He was unaware of the current Austen glut and the fact that some people in Britain are weary of genteel period costume dramas.

“Not in America,” he says. “We love that stuff. It appeals mainly to urban people; we’re glad when those films open, because life in big American cities is quite jangly and harsh. It’s a relief to see a film where the clothes, the houses, the landscapes are pretty and there’s no graffiti. It’s delightful to hear a continuous set of beautifully constructed complete sentences. You don’t hear that anywhere anymore.”

But why does he think Austen, who died in 1817, is now so much in vogue?

“Well, it’s not as if so much great new material is being written that you don’t need to look elsewhere,” McGrath says dryly. “If you want to turn a classic into film, you can’t do better than Austen. The material adapts naturally. The stories advance through discussions, and there’s not much interior monologue.”

Given his credits on “SNL,” his work with Allen and his stint as a satirical columnist, it’s no surprise that McGrath, 37, has taken a humorous approach to adapting “Emma.”

“A lot of writers adapting a book they know is a classic become ponderous and reverential,” he says. “But Jane Austen is breezy, romantic and fun. When I first read ‘Emma,’ it seemed so light, I was surprised the book didn’t float out of my hands. It doesn’t justify the pace of a film like ‘Gandhi.’ ”

Consequently, McGrath ordered his cast to work fast; filming was completed in a brisk 41 days. “It was a way of injecting pace into our approach,” he says.

“I also wrote it to play fast. There are occasions when Emma starts a sentence at the end of a scene, then we cut and she finished the sentence at the start of another scene in new clothes in a different place. That’s a comic effect too.”

For a debutant director, McGrath looks unruffled. Not a crease shows on his crisp white shirt; his manner is calm and his voice gently humorous. In a small wood, he directs a scene in which Emma, who wrongly fancies herself a born matchmaker, meets the couple she wants to bring together: the irritating vicar Mr. Elton (Alan Cumming) and her own silly young friend Harriet (Toni Collette, from “Muriel’s Wedding”). Emma pretends that her shoelace is undone so the couple can walk on through the woods alone.

They complete the scene to McGrath’s satisfaction, and he steps forward to tell them so. “Charming, charming,” he says, laughing and making an applauding motion. He may not be English, but one feels that the Austen legacy is safe in his hands.