Masterpiece's New 'Tom Jones' Trailer Promises a "Fearfully Romantic" Tale

Henry Fielding's classic eighteenth-century novel Tom Jones: A Foundling is one of the first works of literature that can rightly be called a novel as modern readers understand it, yet its story is much less frequently adapted than stories by several of the later authors his work influenced, like Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. (Think about how many times you've seen an onscreen version of, say, Great Expectations or Vanity Fair, is what I'm saying.)

This is one of the reasons that Masterpiece's upcoming Tom Jones adaptation is such a tantalizing prospect: It may be a very old story, but we've seen it on our screens so infrequently it almost feels like something new. And, if the latest Masterpiece trailer is anything to go by, the show is positioning itself as a swoony event for spring, leaning pretty heavily into the romantic elements of Fielding's story. (How, or whether, the series will tackle the bawdier elements of the novel is a question that we'll have to wait until April to answer.)

The story follows the unlikely romance between titular hero Tom Jones (Solly McLeod) and Sophia Western (Sophie Wilde). An orphan with an uncertain heritage, Tom has limited prospects and no fortune. Sophia's a wealthy heiress, and this is a combination that, in class-conscious eighteenth-century England, means that their path to a happily ever after will be slightly (a lot) more complicated than most.