[Hardy-l] New "Native" Coming to ITV?

[nhardyboy at aol.com]

Hello everyone.  I thought I'd pass along some intriguing but frustratingly vague information I found while exploring the wild and wooly Internet.  According to a site called "thecustard.tv," a new television adaptation of _The Return of the Native_ is in the works.  I've been able to find nothing about this program on ITV's web site, on IMDb, or on legitimate news sites.  "Thecustard's" announcement appears in a list of upcoming shows and reads only as follows:


Rural Classics ITV1 – Three period dramas – Silas Marner by George Eliot adapted by Adrian Hodges, Return Of The Native by Thomas Hardy adapted by Simon Burke and one other literary adaptation.  (Source: http://www.thecustard.tv/cominguppage3.html )

Is there anyone who could shed light on this "upcoming" production and/or on the legitimacy of "thecustard?"  There is no indication as to whether the production is in the process of being written, is being filmed, or has been scrapped.  The news could be from last week or from last year.  It's all, in short, a mystery to me.

Assuming that a new _Native_ is coming to television, I'd hope that it would be dramatized with more depth and detail than was evident in the zippy 100-minute production from 1994 that starred Catherine Zeta Jones and Clive Owen.  But assuming "thecustard's" information is correct, I'm a little uneasy seeing _Native_ lumped with _Adam Bede_ and something else as a "rural classic."  At the risk of judging a book by its cover--or a DVD by the package art--this smacks of the kind of easy stereotyping that has so often plagued Hardy's works (and, for that matter, Eliot's).  Calling _Native_ a "rural classic" is like saying _Hamlet_ is all about Scandinavia!

Best,

Paul Niemeyer

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