I wondered when Thomas Hardy wrote - after Dickens, as it tuned out, he was influenced by him - and the reason I was wondering was the plot where the poor waif doesn't realise she's heir to a great name (and probably fortune), which is very Dickensian.
It was a bad evening for TV. This is essentially a story about a man who breaks a woman's heart, leaves her to face a life of abject cruelty, then comes back in time to see her hanged for murder. Why did Thomas Hardy write it and why do people want to remake it?
Q thinks it's exactly to highlight what the effects of being in such a male dominated world were - that perhaps it was ahead of its time. That's as maybe but but it isn't enjoyable.
Why didn't they just rent the manor they shacked up in, under false names?
Still, a polished adaptation by David Nicholls, directed by David Blair and enacted by Gemma Arterton, Eddie Redmayne, Ruth Jones, Hans Matheson, Ian Puleston-Davies, Christopher Fairbank, Jo Woodcock, Jodie Whittaker, Kenneth Cranham, Donald Sumpter, Rebekah Staton and Anna Massey.
Great music from Rob Lane. Edited by Pia di Ciaula and photographed by Wojchiech Szepel.
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