Peter Moore decides that the BBC’s latest mini-drama is a welcome improvement on Sunday night timetables of old.

I’ve got rather bad memories of Sunday night television. As a child I came to despise the horribly cheerful theme music of the Antiques Roadshow, whose merry pipes always seemed an ironic reminder that the weekend was almost over. Apart from that it was The Last of the Summer Wine, with its stale plots and successions of old men roaring uncontrollably through the Yorkshire countryside in bathtubs.

My Sunday nights around the television never properly recovered, and since I’ve tended to reserve the evening for the pub or a book. Last night, however, whilst waiting for the scheduled broadcast of Match of the Day Two and a satisfying victory against West Brom, I decided to sit out an hour beforehand – coming across Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

According to a recent poll Thomas Hardy’s late Victorian novel is amongst our favourite, ranking 26^th on the BBC’s recent ‘Big Read’, flanked by The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien and Middlemarch by George Eliot. That said, I’ve never managed to plough my way through Hardy’s story of a country girl with a desperately cursed love life – probably scared away from the bookshelf by the thickness of Hardy’s tome that numbers 592 pages over 40 fat chapters.

Luckily for me the BBC have taken a kitchen knife to the novel and reduced it to a more digestible size – last night’s episode was the second instalment of a four part series. In the lead role is one of the most talented young actresses in Britain, Gemma Arterton. Only graduating from RADA last year Arterton has barely paused since, first making her debut in Stephen Poliakoff’s Capturing Mary and subsequently appearing in Guy Richie’s RocknRolla and Oliver Parker’s St Trinians. A promising future is expected for Arterton who not only possesses the industry’s essentials of being young, beautiful and talented – but has already completed an outing as a Bond-Girl in the forthcoming Quantum of Solace.

It’s a rightful treat for all of us when the BBC gets around to producing an adaptation like this. The costumes, the script and the quality of acting usually tend to surpass the standard of a Hollywood film and what’s better is that you can enjoy it for free (forget about the license fee for a moment). If you want to revisit or catch the first two episodes of the drama, then they are currently available on BBC iPlayer and they come with a Select Digital recommendation. Sunday nights all of a sudden are looking a little better.

Tags: BBC, Digital TV, Films //