A period romance, based on a classic 18th-century novel where “love conquers all”? It needs a big moment – that scene where hero and heroine realise they are definitively entwined, the air between them crackles and we, the swooning audience, become, in that instant, as committed to their love as they are. In the first episode of Tom Jones, a dramatisation of Henry Fielding’s 1749 book, the moment … never comes. The spark never lights. As a result, the show is four hours in workmanlike pursuit of nothing much.
Solly McLeod, fair of hair and square of temple, is the foundling Tom. He was abandoned as a newborn in the house of wealthy country magistrate Squire Allworthy (James Fleet) and brought up by the squire and his sister Bridget, lovingly but without any pretence that their ward is anything other than low-class. Partly, this is due to the household also containing the toxically snobby William Blifil (James Wilbraham), the result of Bridget’s brief marriage to a posh berk.
