Tom Jones

I know. It's supposed to be based on the Henry Fielding bawdy and humorous classic. I have not read the book and I don't remember the 60's film but I doubt it resembles this. This is like the Jane Austen books and films that I never finished, perhaps made bawdy by the bust-enhancing corsets but certainly not humorous.

I watched this only for Hannah Waddingham and, as Cruella de Ville of the 1800's, she does not disappoint. Unfortunately she is featured in but two of the four episodes.

The scenery in the first episode and the costumes throughout are magnificent. Visually this series is amazing. How this version of the story unfolds, however, is a solid 'meh'.

I'm sorry... I couldn't even finish the first episode. Why bother trying to re-create the wonderful movie version? If you're going to try to do that, at least cast it with fascinating actors. The biggest problem I had was the incredibly insipid portrayal of the lead character, Tom Jones. A new production should At least try to duplicate the fun loving, boisterous, joyful Tom Jones as portrayed by Albert Finley. Instead, I only saw a morose young man.

This was my biggest problem... But let's go onto others. Sophie Weston's father (in this version now her grandfather) was hilariously portrayed as a drunken, loud mouth in the movie by Hugh Griffith. Sadly, he has a stiff upper lip, albeit with a smile, in the TV miniseries.

If anyone continues to watch the series and thinks otherwise, please let us know if it got any better.

It's really hard to believe that 60 years after original Tom Jones things couldn't have been done better. It is sterile, without any real emotions or life of its own.

I am old enough to remember the original Tom Jones with Albert Finney & Susannah York. Now that was funny & raucous! . This pales in comparison, but it's what one comes to expect from PBS....nothing to offend viewers. It's like it's made not to offend ANYONE!

Although we still watch PBS from Canada for some other fine shows with some more depth and substance and, dare I say, swearing. This must have been quite costly to produce....too bad there is no real life substance to it.

I've looked forward to this one for a while as I'm a big fan of the original novel by Henry Fielding. Unfortunately this new adaptation was a dull version of a rip-roaring and very funny book.

For me the two leads were both underwhelming and didn't really have any great chemistry between them. The supporting cast with such great character actors as Alan Armstrong and Felicity Montague frequently outshone them.

Direction and script were both a bit below par, the scenes felt curiously disjointed, it lacked dynamism and to be honest it was a bit dull.

I liked the cheery score by Mathew Slater but nothing else about it grabbed me. It falls far short of the late 90's TV Series and the wonderful Albert Finney film version. A miss.

The 1963 Tom Jones was a deserved classic, perfectly cast and well nigh perfectly adapted. But most of all it was fantastically high spirited, with wit and energy from the first frame. It caused me to read Fielding's novel, one of the great comic romps in English literature.

The inevitable concessions to the spirit of these times don't bother me in this version. But the utter lifelessness, the joylessness, the absence of humor and wit - that does. And making Sophie the narrator and center of wisdom is just absurd. Fielding's Sophie, wonderfully portrayed by Susannah York on the movie, is a smart, but youthful ingenue, beginning her own life's journey (to be sure, with many fewer options than a young man of that v era). Giving her preternatural insight doesn't work.

In short, another BBC disaster. You'd think one of these days the writers and directors who do these things will figure out that you can't slip a little sermon into these classics and have them survive. Not yet, evidently.