Tamara Drewe

Based on Posy Simmonds' beloved graphic novel (which was itself inspired by Thomas Hardy's classic, <i>Far From the Madding Crowd</i>) this wittily modern take on the romantic English pastoral is a far cry from Hardy's Wessex. Tamara Drewe's present-day English countryside – stocked with pompous writers, rich weekenders, bourgeois bohemians, a horny rock star, and a great many Buff Orpington chickens and Belted Galloway cows – is a much funnier place. When Tamara Drewe sashays back to the bucolic village of her youth, life for the locals is thrown upside-down. Tamara, once an ugly duckling, has been transformed into a devastating beauty (with a little plastic surgery help). As infatuations, jealousies, love affairs and career ambitions collide among the inhabitants of the neighbouring farmsteads, Tamara sets a contemporary comedy of manners into play using the oldest magic in the book — sex appeal.