Final part of BBC 1’s Tess
The final part of Tess of the D’Urbervilles was searingly tragic; Eddie Redmayne, who played Angel perfectly encapsulating the pain, raw pain, of loss and of being left behind, alive, with that loss. It’s such a real, painful thing – and that’s why Thomas Hardy’s novel was literally brilliant and why this BBC adaptation was also absolutely brilliant by just sticking to the truth and socking it to us in all its painful import. It got 5.6m viewers, according to the MediaGuardian, and 22% of the audience.
Then, on the news right after, a correspondent told us the BBC cameras had to be turned off while a bereft mother visited the house where her two boys had just died in a horrendous house fire. Can you imagine the pain? But it’s real and it makes me cry like a child.