It starts tonight. Hella excitement :wub:

Oh Jake :(

This isn't trash TV. Did you really expect a response on Buzzjack?

No, of course I didn't. I just thought I'd start it to garner internal excitement. It worked too :o

 

An actually excellent adaptation one episode in. :wub:

You know it was.

 

I usually have an immediate distaste for any drama involving Victorian dresses and bonnets. BOREDOM.

But this was one of those shows you have on in the background, not paying attention, but eventually it grabs in, and BANG. I've never read the book or seen this acted out before, so I might actually stick with this.

 

OMGZ I'm AGEING :o

Edited September 18, 200816 yr by Shoat

THIS IS VERY GOOD

I need to catch up with the first episode of this on iPlayer before the weekend. It looks really good and has had mostly good reviews (rape scene excepted). I wonder if it can live up to all-time favourite period dramas; Bleak House and Jane Eyre (the recent Ruth Wilson adaptation) :o

Jark: James's girlfriend writes period dramas :o awww myz. And yes DO. The mawr that do the mawr I will becomez happeh. Lulz.

 

Shoat: Yes, YES YOU SHOULD. It's actually going to get better. V.strong storyline.

 

Cass: Wha' you watched. o:

 

BRILLIANT!

 

this has to be the best shot period drama ever, the attention to detail (even having long horn cows) is fantastic and the storyline is far better then those silly girly dramas with rich handsome men called 'd'arcy'...

 

this is the best period drama since ben kingsley in 'silas marner, the weaver of raveloe', back in the 80's.

 

 

the storyline is far better then those silly girly dramas with rich handsome men called 'd'arcy'...

 

 

Oh GOD yes. This plot is actually slightly horrifying to watch unfold, Gemma Arterton's doing a great job of getting you to really feel for Tess' plight, she's damned whatever she does, completely trapped. And no-one is going to help her one bit.

 

MORE Thomas Hardy please. I'd love to see Far From The Madding Crowd next.

Edited September 22, 200816 yr by Shoat

It's the perfect match tbh isn't it? 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' is one of the best books of all time imo, layers and layers to it. What makes me happy though is that the BBC have spent enough money and allowed the adaptation to be long enough to make everything work. As Mushy pointed out, attention to detail is epic here and it certainly feels like a period drama. Often you get period dramas which feel like modern people 'trying' to be like a 18th/19th whenever century characters and coming across as a person of now and here. Certainly not with Tess. If that makes sense?

 

It SHOULD continue to get better as the book doesn't really peak until the end. Bravo to the BBC for doing Hardy justice.

 

If they do some more Hardy adaptations (as one suspects they will given the ratings success Tess has had thus far) then I'd like and probably expect to see an adaptation of 'Jude the Obscure'; even though Sue Brideshead does my absolute nut in. Then 'The Mayor of Casterbridge', 'Far from the Maddening Crowd' and 'The Woodlanders' if they can really keep them going.

 

Hardy :wub:

It's the perfect match tbh isn't it? 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' is one of the best books of all time imo, layers and layers to it. What makes me happy though is that the BBC have spent enough money and allowed the adaptation to be long enough to make everything work. As Mushy pointed out, attention to detail is epic here and it certainly feels like a period drama. Often you get period dramas which feel like modern people 'trying' to be like a 18th/19th whenever century characters and coming across as a person of now and here. Certainly not with Tess. If that makes sense?

 

EXACTLY!.... its like looking through a time warp window, totally believeable on the eye.

 

ive watched period dramas for many years, and this is one of the very best, up there with 'poldark', 'i claudius' (although that had dodgy scenery, the acting/storyline was marvelous) and the aforementioned 'silas marner'.

Oh GOD yes. This plot is actually slightly horrifying to watch unfold, Gemma Arterton's doing a great job of getting you to really feel for Tess' plight, she's damned whatever she does, completely trapped. And no-one is going to help her one bit.

 

last nights episode highlighted that shoat, and was painful to watch, seeing her slip slowly from i disaster to another, the slow accumulation of grief makes this a rather dark drama to view... but its BRILLIANT!

 

i dont know the story, (please dont reveal it), but im guessing there will be no happy ending here..

The last part is the best :o That's all I will say.

 

:wub: this adaptation

Well I had the misfortune of catching the first episode of this Tess of the D'Urbervilles BBC adaptation and I found it rather poor, with a rather corny script more befitting a Catherine Cookson adaptation.

 

As I've seen the quite brilliant Roman Polanski movie adaptation starring Nastassja Kinski I know the plot of the Thomas Hardy novel and have no further need to watch a show that is struggling to get a miserable 4 million viewers despite its populist approach on a prime time Sunday night slot.

 

By BBC's very high standards for Costume Dramas it is very poor IMHO, with seemingly several in the cast in the wrong parts.

Well I had the misfortune of catching the first episode of this Tess of the D'Urbervilles BBC adaptation and I found it rather poor, with a rather corny script more befitting a Catherine Cookson adaptation.

 

As I've seen the quite brilliant Roman Polanski movie adaptation starring Nastassja Kinski I know the plot of the Thomas Hardy novel and have no further need to watch a show that is struggling to get a miserable 4 million viewers despite its populist approach on a prime time Sunday night slot.

 

By BBC's very high standards for Costume Dramas it is very poor IMHO, with seemingly several in the cast in the wrong parts.

 

well this beautifully shot drama has totally captivated us, and we started out thinking 'oh no not another lousy period drama. so it changed our minds...

 

 

well this beautifully shot drama has totally captivated us, and we started out thinking 'oh no not another lousy period drama. so it changed our minds...

 

Well I'm glad somebody likes it, because the viewing figures don't seem to match your viewpoints.

 

Episode 1: 7.6 million viewers (beating ITV Poirot by 0.9 million)

Episode 3: 4.2 million viewers (behind ITV Poirot by 3.1 million)

 

I think when you consider this is following on immediately after 8 million people are watching Strictly Come Dancing in the hour before it, that is a bit of a disaster. To put it mildly being the 3rd most watched show on that time slot is bad news, especially as the BBC as such an excellent reputation for Sunday night dramas at this hour, such as last year when Cranford went head to head and beat the penultimate episode of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

 

This show has been (rightly IMHO) panned by the critics & bloggers despite the beautiful scenery, for the following reasons:

 

The casting of Angel is just ever so wrong, compared to the book & the excellent portrayal in the 1979 movie adaptation. There was absolutely no depth to the actors performance to comprehend why Tess fell so head over heels in love with him.

 

The actress playing Tess is/looked far too old, compared to the novel & film adaptation.

 

The novel is set in Dorset, so why the hell were the accents all over the shop. Coming from the West Country one can tell instantly the difference between a Bristol, Wiltshire, Somerset or Devon accent from their dialect, and it was incredibly off putting/annoying, with most of the actors seem to be trying to put in an early application for the Worzel Gummidge remake/revival (that lead part HAS to go to Sean Pertwee - as after all he is a great actor quite literally born for the role).

 

If you are going to remake a classic (as the film company who've remade Brideshead Revisited are now finding out to their cost thanks to some savage reviews), at least make sure it can compare remotely favourably with the definite Roman Polanski Oscar movie adaptation which was close to perfect. This drama does not even come remotely close.

 

I'm a big fan of BBC Costume Dramas (it is one of my closet TV indulgences as I don't watch any of the soaps) and the BBC has proven time, and time again that they can do Costume Drama like no other TV channel in the World, but this hyped drama is far from their finest hour, taking one of the greatest pieces of British literature and turning it into a Catherine Cookson novel. That is IMHO nowhere near the class of BBC Costume Dramas of the last decade like Pride & Prejudice; Tom Jones; Our Mutual Friend; Vanity Fair; David Copperfield; The Gathering Storm; Conspiracy; Bleak House; Jane Eyre; The Ruby In The Smoke/The Shadow In The North & Cranford:

 

Here are some of the reviews:

 

TV Scoop (14/09):

*

I am shocked that anyone could so misinterpret Hardy's novel. Alec's feelings towards Tess are clearly 'more than sport', if not from the outset then certainly by the latter stages of the book. Tess herself admits to being fascinated by him, but the BBC production (although it included a line to this effect) chose to avoid the sexual tension between the pair. The 'seduction scene' is called such because that is what it is; it is not the brutal rape depicted on Sunday night. It appears that, in an attempt to make Tess a more feisty, 21st century character the writers have shunned the subtleties of Hardy's novel in favour of a highly simplified rendition of the horrors that befall women. There is no doubt that Alec does Tess wrong, or that he takes advantage of her vulnerability and innocence, but to suggest that he is a purely evil man (and Tess an entirely simple woman) is to underestimate Hardy's strength as a novelist. All I can say in favour of the BBC's production is that it will, at least, make Tess's shocking final actions a little more plausible.

 

 

Reviewed by Hermione Eyre

Sunday, 21 September 2008

Independent.co.uk

***

 

David Nicholl's adaptation of 'Tess' is faithful to the book but lacks the power and potency of Roman Polanski's Seventies film.

 

There was Tess of the D'Urbervilles being fed strawberries out of season, which can't help but make you think of Roman Polanski's Tess (1979).

 

Since the Seventies, Tess has got with the programme. Seventies Tess was frail and tragic, deeply resigned to her fate; today's Tess is impetuous and hopeful, with a sense of her own entitlement. Hardy described the "brimfulness" of Tess's nature, and while for Nastassja Kinski this meant threatening to spill tears at any moment, Gemma Arterton brims with life and spirit. Kinski had a fatal refinement (which acid-nibbed critic said she brought a touch of Sloane to the role? I saw an imaginary Puffa and pearls on her ever after) but Gemma Arterton is much more authentically earthy and farouche, gorgeous and perfect in the part - even if it's occasionally too pretty a performance, too charmant. Anyway, all the two Tesses have in common is their lips. Both could out-pout a platypus. The lip-mooching school of acting is clearly here to stay. "I could stand here all day watching you pouting and swearing to yourself," said Alec D'Urberville (Hans Matheson) to Tess. She didn't even try to deny it. "I did not swear!"

 

It was a lone false note in David Nicholl's otherwise commendably faithful adaptation – you can follow the book page by page. The rural landscapes are as beautiful as Watts or Millais. The only real problem with this adaptation – at least thus far (we're a quarter in) was the dynamic between Alec and Tess, which was far too coupley, flirty and equal; Tess's torment was reduced to something more ambiguous, a date rape under the greenwood tree. Compare and contrast with the leering Lord Lucan figure in Polanski's version, sniffing at Tess like a tiger in moustaches, and you see how much power has been lost from this BBC version which insists that Tess mustn't be a victim. At this rate, the President of the Immortals is more likely to get a kick in the figleaf from Tess.

 

 

Reviewed by Robert Hanks

Monday, 15 September 2008

Daily Mail.co.uk

**

 

The main thing to say about Tess of the D’Urbervilles is that it looks lovely, which is the point of any costume drama: fidelity to Thomas Hardy’s bleakworld-view isn’t going to shift overseas broadcast rights and DVDs; it’s frocks and rolling countryside you want. Possibly it’s a bit too lovely. The opening scene of David Nicholls’s adaptation had Tess and the other local maidens dancing around in their best frocks on a picturesque if inconvenient clifftop, wearing more gleaming white fabric than in a Persil advert. This is the problem for costume dramas: they can’t afford to remind the viewer too explicitly just how grubby and laborious life was in the days before indoor hot running water, automatic washing machines and biological powder, and there’s not muchpoint in complaining about it.

 

Still, in one respect, Nicholls’s adaptation was notably, and I think wrongly, sanitised: the point at which Tess becomes, in Hardy’s phrase, “maiden no more”. The story – apologies if you know this – begins with Tess’s father, John Durbeyfield, being told by the local parson that he’s a scion of the D’Urbervilles, one of the oldest and, long ago, richest families in the county. With his horse dead in an accident, and the family desperate for money, Tess (Gemma Arterton) consents to visit the wealthy D’Urbervilles at their seat a few miles off, introducing herself asacousin. Here she meets the suave Alec D’Urberville. I can’t help wishing that Hans Matheson had the curling moustache that Hardy makes great play with, but even with a smooth upper lip, his lascivious leer pushes the envelope of caddishness. At his first glimpse of Tess, you could almost hear his inner monologue drawl “Ding dong!” He has her taken on as manager of the estates poultry – largely, as everybody but she immediately works out, so that he canexercise his charms on the spot.

 

After a night out at the local village, Tess gets into a row with drunken workmates, envious of her favoured status. Alec duly pops her on his horse and they ride off, but he then pulls the equine equivalent of the old “Oh dear, we’re out of petrol” line. Left alone while he supposedly looks for help, Tess falls asleep. Alec returns, finds her and... well, the rest is left to your imagination, both in the book and, to a surprising extent, in the television version. As filmed by David Blair, this was one of the murkiest things I’ve ever seen, physically if not morally. Tess’s profile was a shadow only slightly paler than the night around her; Alec, bending over her, loomed only a shade darker than the trees. To film it so indistinctly must have taken some nerve (most of us want to see what’s happening on our televisions), but sadly the ambiguities of the image didn’t extend to the soundtrack, where Tess could be heard screaming in protest. You were left in little doubt that this was a rape, not a seduction; but this certainty isn’t in the original. In the book, confronting Alec,Tess tells him that if she loved him, she wouldn’t loathe herself so much “for my weakness”; television preserved the exchange, except for those three words.

 

What goes on here is the idea that Tess might have given in to Alec, that the distress she suffers is shame rather than the trauma of a victim. We can’t, apparently, cope with the idea of sinanymore, only with crime. This kind of whitewashing is infinitely more distorting and depressing than any amount of physical prettification. The television version has a lot on its side: the locations are, as I say, pretty; Arterton is gorgeous; the music – pastiche Vaughan Williams – is, admittedly, a bit sickly, but the narrative strolls along easily enough; and the acting is mostly fair to middling. The exception is Anna Massey, who is quite brilliant as Alec’s ancient, blind mother, bringing a natural querulous authority and slyness that wipes everybody else off the screen; sensibly enough, the script has beefed her part up a fair bit. But judging by the first episode, it seems that the Victorian country boy Hardy was more broadminded about sex, more prepared to allow his heroine some failings, than cosmopolitan 21st-century television types. Go figure.

 

And I can post anotther 4 or 5 less than great reviews if you like. :lol:

 

 

If you think this Costume Drama is great than good for you (after all there are an awful lot of people who love Westlife & think the Beatles are $h1te, so each to their own, etc), and I'd recommend on Sunday nights the UK Living Channel where they endlessly repeat the various Catherine "The Jeffrey Archer of Costume Dramas © Sir Richard Attenborough" Cookson adaptations, but I think I'll wait for the return of Cranford.

Well I'm glad somebody likes it, because the viewing figures don't seem to match your viewpoints.

 

Episode 1: 7.6 million viewers (beating ITV Poirot by 0.9 million)

Episode 3: 4.2 million viewers (behind ITV Poirot by 3.1 million)

 

I think when you consider this is following on immediately after 8 million people are watching Strictly Come Dancing in the hour before it, that is a bit of a disaster. To put it mildly being the 3rd most watched show on that time slot is bad news, especially as the BBC as such an excellent reputation for Sunday night dramas at this hour, such as last year when Cranford went head to head and beat the penultimate episode of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

 

This show has been (rightly IMHO) panned by the critics & bloggers despite the beautiful scenery, for the following reasons:

 

The casting of Angel is just ever so wrong, compared to the book & the excellent portrayal in the 1979 movie adaptation. There was absolutely no depth to the actors performance to comprehend why Tess fell so head over heels in love with him.

 

The actress playing Tess is/looked far too old, compared to the novel & film adaptation.

 

The novel is set in Dorset, so why the hell were the accents all over the shop. Coming from the West Country one can tell instantly the difference between a Bristol, Wiltshire, Somerset or Devon accent from their dialect, and it was incredibly off putting/annoying, with most of the actors seem to be trying to put in an early application for the Worzel Gummidge remake/revival (that lead part HAS to go to Sean Pertwee - as after all he is a great actor quite literally born for the role).

 

If you are going to remake a classic (as the film company who've remade Brideshead Revisited are now finding out to their cost thanks to some savage reviews), at least make sure it can compare remotely favourably with the definite Roman Polanski Oscar movie adaptation which was close to perfect. This drama does not even come remotely close.

 

I'm a big fan of BBC Costume Dramas (it is one of my closet TV indulgences as I don't watch any of the soaps) and the BBC has proven time, and time again that they can do Costume Drama like no other TV channel in the World, but this hyped drama is far from their finest hour, taking one of the greatest pieces of British literature and turning it into a Catherine Cookson novel. That is IMHO nowhere near the class of BBC Costume Dramas of the last decade like Pride & Prejudice; Tom Jones; Our Mutual Friend; Vanity Fair; David Copperfield; The Gathering Storm; Conspiracy; Bleak House; Jane Eyre; The Ruby In The Smoke/The Shadow In The North & Cranford:

 

Here are some of the reviews:

 

TV Scoop (14/09):

*

I am shocked that anyone could so misinterpret Hardy's novel. Alec's feelings towards Tess are clearly 'more than sport', if not from the outset then certainly by the latter stages of the book. Tess herself admits to being fascinated by him, but the BBC production (although it included a line to this effect) chose to avoid the sexual tension between the pair. The 'seduction scene' is called such because that is what it is; it is not the brutal rape depicted on Sunday night. It appears that, in an attempt to make Tess a more feisty, 21st century character the writers have shunned the subtleties of Hardy's novel in favour of a highly simplified rendition of the horrors that befall women. There is no doubt that Alec does Tess wrong, or that he takes advantage of her vulnerability and innocence, but to suggest that he is a purely evil man (and Tess an entirely simple woman) is to underestimate Hardy's strength as a novelist. All I can say in favour of the BBC's production is that it will, at least, make Tess's shocking final actions a little more plausible.

Reviewed by Hermione Eyre

Sunday, 21 September 2008

Independent.co.uk

***

 

David Nicholl's adaptation of 'Tess' is faithful to the book but lacks the power and potency of Roman Polanski's Seventies film.

 

There was Tess of the D'Urbervilles being fed strawberries out of season, which can't help but make you think of Roman Polanski's Tess (1979).

 

Since the Seventies, Tess has got with the programme. Seventies Tess was frail and tragic, deeply resigned to her fate; today's Tess is impetuous and hopeful, with a sense of her own entitlement. Hardy described the "brimfulness" of Tess's nature, and while for Nastassja Kinski this meant threatening to spill tears at any moment, Gemma Arterton brims with life and spirit. Kinski had a fatal refinement (which acid-nibbed critic said she brought a touch of Sloane to the role? I saw an imaginary Puffa and pearls on her ever after) but Gemma Arterton is much more authentically earthy and farouche, gorgeous and perfect in the part - even if it's occasionally too pretty a performance, too charmant. Anyway, all the two Tesses have in common is their lips. Both could out-pout a platypus. The lip-mooching school of acting is clearly here to stay. "I could stand here all day watching you pouting and swearing to yourself," said Alec D'Urberville (Hans Matheson) to Tess. She didn't even try to deny it. "I did not swear!"

 

It was a lone false note in David Nicholl's otherwise commendably faithful adaptation – you can follow the book page by page. The rural landscapes are as beautiful as Watts or Millais. The only real problem with this adaptation – at least thus far (we're a quarter in) was the dynamic between Alec and Tess, which was far too coupley, flirty and equal; Tess's torment was reduced to something more ambiguous, a date rape under the greenwood tree. Compare and contrast with the leering Lord Lucan figure in Polanski's version, sniffing at Tess like a tiger in moustaches, and you see how much power has been lost from this BBC version which insists that Tess mustn't be a victim. At this rate, the President of the Immortals is more likely to get a kick in the figleaf from Tess.

Reviewed by Robert Hanks

Monday, 15 September 2008

Daily Mail.co.uk

**

 

The main thing to say about Tess of the D’Urbervilles is that it looks lovely, which is the point of any costume drama: fidelity to Thomas Hardy’s bleakworld-view isn’t going to shift overseas broadcast rights and DVDs; it’s frocks and rolling countryside you want. Possibly it’s a bit too lovely. The opening scene of David Nicholls’s adaptation had Tess and the other local maidens dancing around in their best frocks on a picturesque if inconvenient clifftop, wearing more gleaming white fabric than in a Persil advert. This is the problem for costume dramas: they can’t afford to remind the viewer too explicitly just how grubby and laborious life was in the days before indoor hot running water, automatic washing machines and biological powder, and there’s not muchpoint in complaining about it.

 

Still, in one respect, Nicholls’s adaptation was notably, and I think wrongly, sanitised: the point at which Tess becomes, in Hardy’s phrase, “maiden no more”. The story – apologies if you know this – begins with Tess’s father, John Durbeyfield, being told by the local parson that he’s a scion of the D’Urbervilles, one of the oldest and, long ago, richest families in the county. With his horse dead in an accident, and the family desperate for money, Tess (Gemma Arterton) consents to visit the wealthy D’Urbervilles at their seat a few miles off, introducing herself asacousin. Here she meets the suave Alec D’Urberville. I can’t help wishing that Hans Matheson had the curling moustache that Hardy makes great play with, but even with a smooth upper lip, his lascivious leer pushes the envelope of caddishness. At his first glimpse of Tess, you could almost hear his inner monologue drawl “Ding dong!” He has her taken on as manager of the estates poultry – largely, as everybody but she immediately works out, so that he canexercise his charms on the spot.

 

After a night out at the local village, Tess gets into a row with drunken workmates, envious of her favoured status. Alec duly pops her on his horse and they ride off, but he then pulls the equine equivalent of the old “Oh dear, we’re out of petrol” line. Left alone while he supposedly looks for help, Tess falls asleep. Alec returns, finds her and... well, the rest is left to your imagination, both in the book and, to a surprising extent, in the television version. As filmed by David Blair, this was one of the murkiest things I’ve ever seen, physically if not morally. Tess’s profile was a shadow only slightly paler than the night around her; Alec, bending over her, loomed only a shade darker than the trees. To film it so indistinctly must have taken some nerve (most of us want to see what’s happening on our televisions), but sadly the ambiguities of the image didn’t extend to the soundtrack, where Tess could be heard screaming in protest. You were left in little doubt that this was a rape, not a seduction; but this certainty isn’t in the original. In the book, confronting Alec,Tess tells him that if she loved him, she wouldn’t loathe herself so much “for my weakness”; television preserved the exchange, except for those three words.

 

What goes on here is the idea that Tess might have given in to Alec, that the distress she suffers is shame rather than the trauma of a victim. We can’t, apparently, cope with the idea of sinanymore, only with crime. This kind of whitewashing is infinitely more distorting and depressing than any amount of physical prettification. The television version has a lot on its side: the locations are, as I say, pretty; Arterton is gorgeous; the music – pastiche Vaughan Williams – is, admittedly, a bit sickly, but the narrative strolls along easily enough; and the acting is mostly fair to middling. The exception is Anna Massey, who is quite brilliant as Alec’s ancient, blind mother, bringing a natural querulous authority and slyness that wipes everybody else off the screen; sensibly enough, the script has beefed her part up a fair bit. But judging by the first episode, it seems that the Victorian country boy Hardy was more broadminded about sex, more prepared to allow his heroine some failings, than cosmopolitan 21st-century television types. Go figure.

 

And I can post anotther 4 or 5 less than great reviews if you like. :lol:

If you think this Costume Drama is great than good for you (after all there are an awful lot of people who love Westlife & think the Beatles are $h1te, so each to their own, etc), and I'd recommend on Sunday nights the UK Living Channel where they endlessly repeat the various Catherine "The Jeffrey Archer of Costume Dramas © Sir Richard Attenborough" Cookson adaptations, but I think I'll wait for the return of Cranford.

 

 

since when has viewing figures ever been a mark of quality?.. NON of the best , intelectual, informative, interesting programmes have ever had high viewing figures... its the same argument you often use to support a pop act... they sold more so they are better.... well just look at the 'top selling #1s of the 00's ' thread in chart to see that theory is utter bollox!

 

most of us dont come from devon, or dont care how accurate the accent is! and as someone who has never seen or read the story before i have come with no pre-conceptions, no parellels, to judge it against. i have no idea how true to the book it is, and in many ways i dont care.

 

pride and prejudice? :lol: oh please! thats the very sort of slushy girly $h!te that gives costume dramas a bad name! ...... "But judging by the first episode, it seems that the Victorian country boy Hardy was more broadminded about sex, more prepared to allow his heroine some failings, than cosmopolitan 21st-century television types. Go figure. ".... EXACTLY! you call this a 'bad' review?

 

m8.... yet again you point to others opinions to support your point.... get this... i dont give a SH1T what any pundit thinks, no reviewer or composer (macca) dictates what i like or dont like, i figure that one out for myself!

 

i cant abide catherine cookson dramas... i see NO parellels at all so that blows your theory out of the water...:lol: as for cranford... yep i loved that too, and the scenery is almost as good, flawed characters, real life, and as enjoyable as tess to watch..

 

and compareing me to a westlife loving, beatles hating fan is utterly unacceptable, especially coming from someone who thinks the wets 'love is all around' is better then the orig! :lol: ... if you are so quick to point to popular opinion to support your stance... get this.... YOU are the ONLY person (male over 35) in the music arena that has EVER said that! at pop quizes the wets get BOO'D when its played, NO ONE i know thinks its anything other then pure, unadulterated SH1T. :)

 

oh dear.... the final episode really went off the rails. it should have been a 6 parter then there would have been more time to explore the characters. as it was it became predictable, the murder, the policemen, we saw that comming a mile off. in all this last episode seemed too rushed, the script was noticably poorer.

 

it was obvious why 'tess' has never had much dramatisation, (unlike david copperfield, pride n prejudice etc), as it was never going to have a happy ending for the heroin. people like the alpha male to get his bint and live happily ever after, so story made a welcome change and although you just knew (as ive said, i didnt know the story so it was all new to me) that the outcome was going to be dark... it was still upsetting to see this fictional life slowly sink through no fault of her own towards its unjust but inevitable conclusion.