‘Tom Jones’ Review: PBS Retells Fielding’s Classic Tale

There is really no point to repurposing a classic—Fielding’s book is one of the earliest works of English literature to be defined as a “novel”—without bringing something new to the table, or desk, or easy chair. And there’s also no point in co-opting a title without displaying some fealty to the original, which Ms. Hughes does: Tom, discovered abandoned as an infant in the bed of the large-hearted Squire Allworthy ( James Fleet ), is attributed to local serving girl Jenny Jones (Isobelle Molloy), who refuses to name the father and disappears for most of the story. The good squire raises Tom alongside his nephew, William Blifil (James Wilbraham), who hates Tom, mostly because his de facto brother possesses all the charm that Blifil lacks. What Tom lacks is Blifil’s birthright, and his mean spirit.

This four-part “Masterpiece” presentation conforms to the novel in many ways that director Tony Richardson’s movie didn’t. Where it departs from the book is far more significant. Ms. Hughes (Georgia Parris directs) abandons Fielding’s narrative balance—and the author’s caustic running commentary on his moralistic characters’ immoral antics—to create more of a two-handed tale: In this rendition, half the storytelling is devoted to Tom’s true love, Sophia Western ( Sophie Wilde ), the granddaughter of the intemperate Squire Western ( Alun Armstrong ) and a young woman born into slavery on a sugar plantation in Jamaica.

Being a 2023 interpretation, Ms. Hughes’s version can’t quite avail itself of the controversy that greeted Fielding’s book, or take as seriously as his readers did the “scandals” attached to Tom: He is, as is repeated often, a “bastard” whose libidinous journey from Somerset to London and back amounts to a picaresque odyssey of unacceptable license for a character in 18th-century fiction—or nonfiction, for that matter. But it hardly amounts to outrage now. Looking for a source of moral indignation, Ms. Hughes settles on race, though the subject, ultimately, is treated rather casually. Class, as it should be, is the real culprit, though here—as in Fielding’s original—minds aren’t changed. Tom’s identity is.

Ms. Wilde and Mr. McLeod are an attractive pair, ever sympathetic and beset by the characters around them, who are all very busy thwarting their romance—and providing what juice there is in this “Tom Jones.” Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Fleet are a treat as Western and Allworthy, the former unhinged, the latter endearingly hinged. Susannah Fielding, as one of Tom’s liaisons, Mrs. Waters, brings the erotic electricity lacking elsewhere, and Daniel Rigby, as the canceled schoolteacher Partridge, is consistently and dryly funny.

Shirley Henderson, ever-wonderful, is one of Sophia’s meddling aunts, another being played by Hannah Waddingham, who as the physically epic and epically randy Lady Bellaston steals the entire series—not just in moments when she rules Maleficent-ly over the proceedings, all scheming and sexiness, but at those times when her efforts to separate Tom and Sophia fall apart. Realizing she’s not going to get from Tom what she really wants, Bellaston visibly deflates, pales and withers; the performance may surprise fans of Ms. Waddingham’s work on “Ted Lasso” (as team owner Rebecca), but she’s fairly astounding on that show, too, where she gets to wear fewer feathered headdresses but occupies space with just as much delightful authority.

—Mr. Anderson is the Journal’s TV critic.