(2008) This is the third filmed version - four-hour BBC mini-series directed by David Blair from David Nicholls's screenplay - I've seen of Thomas Hardy's novel, and though it is most faithful to the original, it is least to my liking.

In Parson Tringham's hailing haggler John Durbeyfield (Ian Puleston-Davies) by the title Sir John, informing the sentimental common fellow of his connection to the D'Urbervilles, Knights of the Royal Oak, an ancient, noble lineage all but extinct, he sets in motion a tragic tale. At the same time on this day in May his daughter Tess (Gemma Arterton, more homely in her comeliness than her predecessors) is dancing on the green among other white-clad hoydens waiting for their partners when three young men from afar happen by, one of whom dances with some of the girls (but not Tess).

While John takes undue pride in his newfound status, his obese wife Joan (Ruth Jones) suggests their sending Tess over to Trantridge to "claim kin" where another, prosperous branch of the D'Urberville family resides, hoping for some sympathetic help - the only horse has been killed in an accident, for which Tess feels particularly guilty.

Tess meets Alec (Hans Matheson), whom she assumes to be her cousin, the presumptuous son of a blind, invalid woman who lives in the new-built mansion; he arranges for Tess, who refuses charity, only wanting "honest labor," to manage the poultry farm and turns his attentions on the attractive lass, assuming a country girl without means will soon succumb to his better standing. (In an exchange between the son and mother, for whom there's no love lost - father like son, "all vanity" - we learn that Alec's deceased father, actually a Stokes, "annexed the old name.")

Repeatedly rebuffed in his courting, Alec implores: "What would I have to do to win your affections?" On the road at night Alec rescues Tess from a row with a peasant woman amongst the hired hands returning from a Saturday-night barn dance; but as he rides off with her, one of the women cackles to the others: "Out of the frying pan …!" In the woods after failing to win Tess over with a gentle, generous approach, including his having provided her father with a new horse, he rapes her.

When she departs without warning homeward, he overtakes her on the road, making apologies - "I was born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad, in all probability, but I won't be bad to you" - promising after she refuses his offer of a ride - "You are just dust and ashes to me now" - to help her in any way if she's in need.

Ignoring his earlier proffer, she gives birth to a sickly baby, naming it Sorrow, baptizing and burying it herself in a pauper's grave in unconsecrated ground nearby the pompous church after Parson Tringham declines to allow for a Christian burial: "I do not like you, and I do not like your God."

Two years later she again leaves her home, finding work in the lush valley of the Great Dairies on the kindly Mr Crick's farm where she makes acquaintance with Angel Clare (Eddie Redmayne, lean, freckle-faced, and not particularly handsome), who's apprenticing himself to become a farmer. Eventually they recognize each other from the dancing in the meadow in Marlott. Displaying her seriousness, Tess tells Angel of her belief that more important than any birthday or anniversary is the day awaiting for her to die.

The other three milkmaids - Izz Huett, Marian, and Retty - each fond of Angel, dream of having him for themselves; but when he carries each of them, one at a time, on their way to church (which he doesn't attend) in their Sunday best, across a flooded road, he says to Tess, the last to be carried, who at first demurs, that the other three were for her sake.

When their affections have entwined them, Angel makes a brief sojourn home in hopes of receiving his reverend father's blessing to marry Tess ("a lady in feeling and nature though not in common parlance"), arguing for the milkmaid over Mercy Chant, a young lady of his social standing, since his plan to farm in South America calls for a woman with country talents, not refined, aristocratic accomplishments. His Protestant father eventually relents: "providing she's pure and of good faith."

But when Angel asks her to marry him, mournfully she declines: "I only want to love you." Finally Tess explains why she cannot marry him: since he has remarked on his hatred of old families and the ancient aristocratic principle, he wouldn't approve of her family's having been descended from the D'Urbervilles. "If you'll take my name, you'll escape yours," urges Angel, who has renounced religion in favor of moral values of simplicity and purity.

Against her mother's warning of revealing her dreadful past because men are proud of their respectability, Tess writes a letter of confession the night before she is to be wed. Angel demonstrates no reaction when he sees her in the morning, saying he accepts her for whatever she is; but the envelope she'd slipped under his door had lodged beneath the rug unseen, which she recovers and burns. However, she nearly faints when he tells her of his father's having come across a counterfeit to her family's name, a sinister fellow whose mother has died.

Following the wedding, Angel takes Tess for their honeymoon to an ancestral mansion, once having belonged to the D'Urbervilles, which he has rented a week for them to be alone together; a package arrives from his parents as a wedding gift of heirloom jewels once belonging to Angel's grandmother. Each believing the other the ideal, the perfect representative of fantastic illusion, not flesh and blood susceptible to common sin, before proceeding to consummation, Angel clears his conscience by confessing to a 48-hour debauchery with an older woman in London, while lost and confused following his disappointment of being unacceptable to both church and university, expecting Tess will forgive his indiscretion.

Readily she does, "Because now you can forgive me," then unsparingly shares her own sordid past of her being compelled to surrender her virtue to Alec. Unfortunately Angel is not so forgiving: "You are more sinned against than sinned," but "You were one person and now you're another." When she cannot swear that the fault lay entirely with Alec, Angel harshly declares that though "we are chained together," they cannot in good conscience live together while Alec, her natural husband, lives. "This man knows my father," he says to her, fearing her former liaison will become known.

To keep up appearances, Tess returns to her parents' home while Angel spends time with his family (his father reads from Scripture: "who can find a virtuous woman"), explaining only vaguely that he will introduce them to his bride when he returns from Brazil. Before he departs, he whispers in Mercy's ear ("There is no God"), who rebukes him: "You are a wicked man!"

Chancing upon Izz on the road, he impulsively offers to take her with him to South America; but when she answers him if she could love him more than Tess, honestly saying that no one could, he changes his mind, breaking her heart again.

For a third time Tess departs from her parents' abode, this time laboring for the monster Groby at his terrible, notorious farm in Flintcomb-Ash under harsh, horrible conditions. There Tess ("no pity, no questions") finds Marian and Izz again, who urge her to write to Angel of her plight. A year past her wedding, she attempts to visit Angel's parents; but when treated disdainfully (without knowing who she is) by his two brothers, she stops short of making an introduction.

On her way back to the farm she comes across Alec, a convert to Methodism, preaching publicly, though she says she has no belief in such sudden changes of heart. Learning of his child's death, he says: "I would have helped you." He begs her as an abandoned wife of a "mythological personage" to come live with him; but when she steadfastly refuses, he replies: "I will pray for you." Later, dispensing with "sackcloth and ashes," resuming his former role as a rake, he persistently beseeches her to come away - "Does he write? Does he provide money? Does he even know you are here?" - offering as well to provide for her mother and siblings.

In desperation Tess writes to Angel, asking him to save her from temptation; but after her father dies, forcing the family to abandon their dwelling, she sends a final missive of utter disappointment. Finally Angel, barely recovered from yellow fever and an arduous voyage home, reading Tess's letters for the first time after his long illness in Brazil, sets out to find her, determined to show her mercy after so many injustices and cruelties had been visited upon her.

Eventually locating Mrs Durbeyfield in Trantridge at Alec's mother's former estate, Angel's told by Liza-Lu (after her mother's refusal to divulge Tess's whereabouts) that her sister resides in Sanbourne, a city on the coast. With perseverance he locates her in a guest house where she, Mrs D'Urberville, lives with Alec: "It's too late…. I am his creature…. I am already dead." He pleads, taking all the fault upon himself, to no avail.

After Angel leaves, Tess goes back upstairs to Alec in bed waiting for her, argues with him for having told her that Angel would never return for her, and after much commotion departs the premises. Below Mrs Brooks, the householder at The Herons, notices a stain of blood gradually expanding on the ceiling.

Finding Angel at the train station, she tells him that she is free of Alec. Together they become renegades from the law, hoping to make their way to Bristol and a ship to North America but first taking temporary residence in an empty house - "What come will come," says Tess, experiencing a meager ration of happiness with Angel, "I only want to think of now" - before they must move off to Stonehenge.

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