Tess

Another TV version of "Tess of the Durbervilles", another well produced, carefully crafted work and another production that is not Hardy-esque.
There's the spirited young woman with yearnings to better herself, the young "man of the manor" who desires to seduce her, the man's ailing mother who has always disliked him, the village yokels who dance round the maypole (or whatever) and ..... Yes, we are surely in Mills and Boon country.
Which is far from Hardy country.
Hardy country is the country of Egdon Heath. While it is the country of peasants and squires and so on it is also, primarilly I would say, the country of narrative literature at its finest.
My father always used to extol the virtues of Hardy's descriptions of places. His description of Egdon Heath in "The Return of the Native" is a brilliant piece of prose that can hold its own with the best, with Conrad, with Henry James, with Dickens even.
What TV cannot do is present a picture of this. It can, of course, show us beautiful pictures of the Heath but it cannot make us feel, with the camera alone, what Hardy felt.
"Tess of the Durbervilles" is a good piece of TV, strong in character and plot, brilliantly acted and produced but it not essential Hardy.