Os Woodlanders

I found this very involving and affecting in a way that I've not found other Hardy adaptations or the books themselves. As a film it has an unusual combination of modesty of style - no great acting showiness - and of the characters themselves, allied to an inspired and faultless control of light and mood.

It has an immense integrity - the recreations of the woodlander's homes and workplaces, as mentioned earlier the superb faultless control of the quality of light (longish scenes shot just after dawn, at dusk etc etc), the authentic period behaviour and manners, the unforced pace mirroring the mood. It is full of traditional understated virtues both the story itself and in the way it wears its technical virtuosity.

If Titanic (mentioned by an earlier reviewer) was a great clanking iron CGI mechanical monster, heavy handed in all departments, this is all living and breathing humanity on a human scale - an increasingly rare treat.