Masterpiece's 'Tom Jones' First Look Features a Gorgeous Hannah Waddingham

Masterpiece released a pair of new images from its forthcoming adaptation of Tom Jones this week, which features our first look at Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham as Lady Bellaston.

The series is based on Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, one of the first works of literature that can be rightly classified as a novel as we recognize it today. Fielding's coming-of-age story about a young bastard son's struggle to find his place in the world features many of the stylistic tropes of comedic storytelling that we still embrace today, including a central romantic pairing and a story that ends with a happily ever after.

Despite the groundbreaking status of Fielding's novel, there have been surprisingly few onscreen versions of it, and this is the first Masterpiece adaptation of the story. A 1963 feature film starred Albert Finney as Tom and won four Academy Awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture. A BBC television adaptation with Max Beesley in the title role aired back in 1997, and the book has been the basis for several operas and stage plays. There's even a jukebox musical take on the story in the works featuring the music of crooner Tom Jones. (I don't know either, y'all.)