Episode list

Parson Tringham tells no one that John Durbeyfield's family is an impoverished branch of the noble, once mighty D'Urbervilles. However 'celebrating' in the pub, bad heart and bad luck end up completely ruining the family finances. His wife finally convinces daughter Tess to swallow her pride and seek help from the D'Urbervilles on a nearby estate. The heir, Alec D'Urberville, takes to her, arranges a job on the family's poultry farm and becomes her family's benefactor. Lost in the forest after a dance, he takes advantage of her. To save her honor and independence, she decides to leave.

After Tess is refused a graveyard burial for her child, she leaves home and becomes a milkmaid. The surprising perk of the job is the presence of Angel Clare, son of a parson. He is learning the farm trade there, planning to emigrate, his parents are planning to set him up overseas. The true gentleman is the dream of all the girls, but only has eyes for Tess. She is as smitten after accidentally seeing him sleeping in the buff. He braves his mother's objections to wanting to marry a girl beneath the family's station, unlike Mercy Chant. Tess, at first, dares not accept on account of Mercy, a colleague and her past. As he doesn't object to her true genealogy, she reconsiders. Only when they are packed to leave, she discovers her last letter of confidences wasn't opened.

After Tess is married to Angel Clare, he tells her a 48 hours affair he had once, and she him the dark secret from the unread letter. He can't accept it, but as it happened before their wedding the law doesn't accept it as ground for divorce. Angel sets off for Brazil alone. Mercy won't have a bar of him, Retti would follow him but by her own admission she can't love him as much as Tess, so he makes up his mind to go alone. Tess returns home, then seeks another farm maid employ, accepting the worst job at Groby's, under his cruel, jealous bailiff. On the road she meets Alec D'Urberville, now a traveling preacher, who claims to be converted. She tells him about their later son but refuses to stay with him. He proposes marriage, insisting even after he learns she's already wed but abandoned. She keeps writing to Angel, who can't answer as he is gravely ill.

After Alec gives up preaching in order to court Tess and father Darbeyfield is killed by illness, she writes a vicious letter to Angel rejecting him as 'cruel', which he never receives, and starts wandering. By the time he's home and healed, it's hard to find her. When he does, she's 'Alec's creature'. She now commits an irreparable crime which ruins all their lives after a last passionate phase.