The rest is mixed. Director David Blair and scriptwriter David Nicholls do fairly by Hardy, though Angel's sleepwalking scene is omitted, the misery of swede hacking and reed drawing at Flintcomb-Ash is played down, and Arterton patters around without hat or bonnet too often for modesty. Hans Matheson was a bland title character in the 2003 Granada/WGBH Doctor Zhivago (with Keira Knightley as Lara), and, sans handlebar moustache, he's a bland, if oily and creepy, Alec here; Eddie Redmayne is a little boyish for the Adonis of the novel, but he does grow into the part. There are quirky, unnerving contributions from Ian Puleston-Davies and Ruth Jones as Tess's parents and a more actorly one from Anna Massey as Alec's mother; Jodie Whittaker and Rebekah Slaton avoid contemporary-cute as Tess's friends Izzy and Marian. Robert Lane's otherwise unmemorable score makes haunting use of the English folk song "The Snow It Melts the Soonest." Angel melts at the end; some viewers might as well.
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