Thomas Hardy's classic epic remains one of the most popular novels, this TV adaptation vividly depicts the powerful tale of a peasant girl whose life is torn apart by the love and jealousy of two men. Justine Waddell stars as the hapless Child of Nature who is tossed around by the dark forces of fate. Jason Flemyng is the dark and sinister Alec D'Urberville whose relentless pursuit of Tess triggers the heroine's downfall. Oliver Milburn plays the handsome young Angel Clare, the caring rebel who falls deeply in love with Tess.
An accident in the butchers shop leads Norman Pitkin and Mr Grimsdale to the hospital where, after causing the normal ammount of chaos, Pitkin finds Lindy, a little girl who hasn't spoken or smiled since her parents were killed in an aeroplane accident. Pitkin decides to help.
Norman Puckle, a well-meaning but clumsy grocer's assistant, can't seem to do anything right. After being rejected by Marlene, the love of his life, he attempts suicide, but can't even do that. He is saved from jumping off a cliff at 'Lover's Leap' by a Royal Navy petty officer. He persuades Puckle to join the Royal Navy, where he'll meet 'lots of girls'. Life in the Navy proves not to be as rosy as it's been described, and Puckle fails at every task during basic training. But despite this, he's regarded by the Admiral in charge of a rocket project to be a 'typical average British sailor', and chosen to be the first man to fly into outer space in an experimental rocket.
In a mansion block in Knightsbridge, a gang of middle-aged biddies decide to brighten up "the dullness of the tea time of life" by staging a series of robberies on furriers, then donating the proceeds to charitable concerns. Terry Thomas as a retired army officer leads the gang, which includes Athene Seyler and Hattie Jacques, on a series of capers that nearly go awry when their maid, Billie Whitelaw, an ex-con and also a resident of the block, falls for a police officer.
Jim Dixon feels anything but lucky. At the university he has to do the bidding of absent-minded and boring Professor Welch to have any hope of keeping his job. Worse, he has managed to get entangled with unexciting but neurotic Margaret Peel, a friend of the Professor's. All-in-all, the pub is the only friendly place to be. His misery is completed at a dreadful weekend gathering of the Welch clan by the arrival of son Bertrand. Not so much that Betrand is loud-mouthed and boorish - which he is - but that he has as companion Christine Callaghan, the sort of marvellous and unattainable woman Jim can only dream about.
Roger Thursby is an overly keen, newly-qualified barrister who rubs his fellow barristers up the wrong way. When he is thrown in at the deep-end, with a particularly hot-tempered judge and tricky case, Thursby learns how to prove himself not only to the judge and fellow barristers but also to the public gallery.