steve sharpe

When I saw this series advertised in the paper back in 1973 I thought it was a type of bawdy Canterbury Tales and only watched it for this reason. It was a wednesday evening, there was nothing else on so I tuned in .The melancoly theme tune and atmospheric stories set in a moody countryside got me hooked. I bought the BBC paperback book that was published and found that the author was Thomas Hardy who was a giant of classic english literature. I was 21 back then and knew of Charles Dickens but somehow Thomas Hardy had eluded me.Wessex Tales were his short stories filmed for the TV series but he had also written full length classic novels, some of which had been made into feature films for the cinema.I am 68 now and it was this Wessex Tales TV series that led me to buy and read all his other novels.Brilliant.