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Friday 9 January 2009

When I am King

Earth: The Climate Wars (BBC 2); Amazon (BBC 2); Tess of the d’Urbervilles (BBC 1)

Finally Tess of the d’Urbervilles (BBC1, Sunday). My wife hates Hardy so much I was forced to watch it on my own, which was maybe for the best. When the Polanski version came out with Nastassja Kinski, my schoolmate Simon Nelson and I rechristened it ‘Toss’, and I have to say the Tess in this version, Gemma Arterton, is no less inspirational.

In all the pre-publicity, the BBC’s new serialisation has been bigged up as ‘rock’n’roll’ Tess and the antidote to Polanski’s Laura Ashley version. This is nonsense. It’s just beautifully cast, sensitively shot, intelligently scripted (by David Nicholls), not-mucked-about-with Tess. God, I hate watching it though. Has a novelist ever used his creation more cruelly? There’s never a moment where poor Tess has the slightest chance of escaping her tragic fate. She has to go to court favour with the d’Urbervilles because of the accident with the horse; she has to go with Alec on the ride where he rapes her because otherwise she’d have been torn to bits by the drunken harridans who are jealous of her beauty; and just when she might have been redeemed she ends up with the most vicious prig — Angel Clare — on the planet. My wife thinks it’s all too implausible. Me, I think Hardy’s the one writer who tells it like it really is.

More articles from: James Delingpole | this section

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