A dark Victorian melodrama

This was Thomas Hardy's final novel, despite the fact he lived another 32 years. This BBC production of 1971 does not flinch from the profound themes of the book, as we are made to look at the doomed lives of four people, three adults and a child, and the claustrophobic relationships of being in love with the unattainable person.

This is an noteworthy performance by Robert Powell in the earlier years of his career as an actor, and well worth watching even if for nothing else. The lives of the principals in the novel demonstrate the tight grip that late 19th century morality had on marriage and their desire to break free of such conventions. There is no escape for them in their predicament.