Cast
Tess Durbeyfield : Justine Waddell
Alec D'Urberville : Jason Flemyng
Angel Clare : Oliver Milburn
Jack Durbeyfield : John McEnery
Joan Durbeyfield : Lesley Dunlop
Mrs D'Urberville : Rosalind Knight
Crick : Anthony O'Donnell
Mrs Crick : Christine Moore
Kail : Bryan Pringle
Marian : Debbie Chazen
Izzy : Candida Rundle
Retty : Amanda Brewster
Car Darch : Linda Armstrong
Nancy : Hannah Waterman
Cissie : Charlotte Bellamy

Director
Ian Sharp

This excellent BBC production from 1998 sets one of Thomas Hardy's best-known novels (Roman Polanski made a film version in 1979). After her mother sends her to distant, moneyed relatives, Tess grows from naive but willful young provincial beauty to determined mother to sad martyr. At the hands of 'cousin' Alec , a womanising, self-centered dandy, Tess begins her lessons on the social double standards, made all the more difficult given her own demanding personal code. The blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful gentleman farmer appropriately named Angel seems to offer Tess her salvation, but she cannot escape her past.

Ian Sharp's direction brings out the Hardyesque qualities of the English countryside: promises of lushness and beauty that turn into hard, chilly disappointments.