Recently watched the 1994 BBC production of The Return of the Native. Good? Well ... uneven. Beautiful visually, in more ways than one - Zeta Somebody-Jones, whom we're all supposed to know, of course - is perfection as Eustacia; one of the few instances I've encountered in which the woman who plays the stunning beauty actually is - that's all subjective, though, of course. 'Mrs Yeobright' was great. 'Clym' was the real weak link; the actor never seemed to get a real grip on the part. The writer(s) got the essence of the novel down to 90 minutes without taking unreasonable liberties. The editing is clumsy; I got the impression they got rushing to patch it together to meet a deadline. If you like the look of rural Victoriana, and of course you do, you'll enjoy that aspect of it. It includes a couple of short bits of a 'village band' and mummering ....

I seem to be the only person on earth who has reservations about the novel itself: it's Hardy, so the writing and the play of ideas have depth - but the plot depends on more coincidences, accidents, improbabilities, and surprise inheritances than all of Shakespeare's comedies and The Complete Charles Dickens combined. The film benefits from having had to cut most of them out.