IT'S remarkable to think the BBC has never attempted to tackle Hardy's greatest work in the past. But its first-ever adaptation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles presented daunting challenges for the production team.

The series, which starts tomorrow, September 14, saw the team travel across the West Country to find suitable locations – from Georgian terraces in Clifton to manor houses in Bath, Wiltshire, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Dorset.

Screenwriter David Nicholls says he became obsessed with trying to capture the light and shade in Thomas Hardy's classic novel.

"To my mind, Tess's and Angel's farewell in the morning light at Stonehenge is the most moving scene in English literature," he says. "So to be able to recreate it, at dawn, on location, at the correct time of year, was tremendously exciting.

"This production was shot entirely on location on 35mm, and while the results are frequently stunning, this inevitably brings huge challenges.

"In Hardy, people tend not to sit in front of drawing room fires; they stand in landscapes, frequently in the rain or snow.

"Shooting outdoors through a particularly unpredictable English spring made great demands on the production team.

"Any adaptation of Hardy has to capture the beauty of his nature writing without forgetting that this is a brutal, unforgiving landscape, too, and David Blair, a director who works a great deal with contemporary writers such as Jimmy McGovern and Donna Franceschild, has brought a toughness and authenticity to the world and the performances.

"We set out on this adaptation with various aims. The production should be beautiful, but not pretty; it should be about characters in a landscape, not just the landscape. It should grip like a thriller, but also move the audience deeply.

"Tess of the D'Urbervilles is a romantic epic, one of the great love stories, but a cruel and violent saga, too, and I hope we've faithfully captured that high emotion, the mix of light and shade that makes Hardy's novel so compelling and sublime."

For viewers, it will be quite a challenge to see which West Country landmarks they can recognise. In Bristol, a property in The Paragon, Clifton, became the exterior of the Sandbourne guesthouse in the film.

You might also spot places such as Church House in Corsham, which becomes the Plough Inn, Great Chalfield Manor House, near Melksham, or Owlpen Manor, in Dursley. For bright young star Gemma Arterton, the role of Tess was a world away from acting alongside Daniel Craig in the upcoming Bond film Quantum of Solace.

"This is my first real period piece and the petticoats and hair extensions made me feel really girly and vulnerable," Gemma says.

"I love period features and researching the period is really interesting, feeling it's all part of our history.

"The West Country locations and views were stunning, my parents came to visit me on set and were like, wow, the scale of it! The landscapes are characters in themselves and just as important as the timescales and time of the year. It has a sort of a feel of a Western to it."

A city girl at heart, Gemma immersed herself in all things rural, by learning several new skills. "I'm a complete city girl, but working with the animals was a real experience, I learned to milk a cow and a goat. Having the animals there is an effort when you're filming, but it makes all the difference to the final look.

"Swede-hacking was definitely the most gruelling. It brings home the tough conditions people had to work in then, it's a sobering thought.

"Really strange things happened on set, the weather kept changing to suit the scene, a character would say 'on a clear day you can see vales and great dairies' and all of a sudden the mist would clear and the sun would come out! All very weird, but as we filmed so much outside, it was a dream."

Gemma spent a day on Wharf Farm, near the south Gloucestershire village of Cambridge, to learn the techniques of milking.

The farm's owners, Judy and Bert King, took the starlet's visit in their stride, and Judy says Gemma enjoyed her time with the goats.

"Gemma was a bit nervous at first," Judy explains, "but by the end of the day, she'd got to grips with basic milking." But the biggest challenge for the crew was losing £150,000-worth of costumes overnight in a suspected arson attack on the unit base at Tog Hill near Wick, five weeks into the shoot.

"I'd never wish it on my worst enemy," said the costume designer James Keast.

"We had to remake hundreds of costumes from scratch – it meant dyeing, painting and spraying around the clock."

But the crew refused to allow the set back to dampen their spirits, and soon were back into the filming schedule, as passionate as ever about the project.

Like many of us, screenwriter David first tackled the novel at school.

"I read Tess of the D'Urbervilles when I was 16, rather grudgingly, as part of an exam curriculum," he says. "I don't think I can recall ever being so affected by a book.

"Re-reading it nearly 25 years later, it had lost none of its power to engage and move, shock and delight.

"It's a novel of remarkable power, with a story that grips from its very first scene until its terrible, heart-breaking conclusion.

"It seemed to cry out for a new screen adaptation and I'm delighted with our final version. I hope it faithfully captures the light and shade of Hardy's masterpiece.

"It's commonplace to talk of classic novels as being surprisingly 'modern', but this seems especially true of Tess. The pleasure, and occasional frustration, of many classic novels is that they revolve around unspoken passions, but in Tess, everything is expressed. It's a wonderfully emotionally charged story, both intensely romantic and startlingly violent."

Actor Eddie Redmayne gives the heroic Angel Clare an easy charm.

"The courtship of Angel and Tess contains some delightful, sensual love scenes – almost a romantic comedy at times – and yet this follows an act of startling cruelty and callousness.

"Hardy is justly famed as a writer of the natural world, but he is also tough-minded, provocative, indignant at hypocrisy and injustice, and I hope we've captured some of this dark drama, as well as the beauty and romance of the story.

"Perhaps Hardy's greatest achievement is his heroine.

"It's unusual to read a book where the author is so clearly in love with his creation, and Hardy devises a series of extraordinary highs and lows for her, from giddying romantic love and prosperity to terrible degradation and suffering.

"It's a daunting challenge for any actress, but I think Gemma Arterton's performance is extraordinary."

Tess of the D'Urbervilles is on BBC1, on Sunday, September 14.