Last night’s final episode began with a famous scene from the novel, in which Groby’s farm is mechanised – an ominous sign in Hardy Land, if another ominous sign is needed. Tess, having already undergone abuse, extreme poverty and constant hardship thanks to the men in her life (Alec for taking advantage of her, and Angel for punishing her for it), is now working as the lowest farm labourer possible. To make things worse, Alec has thrown off his short-lived piety, and is adamant that he will have her back. Is it just me, or does it not really feel as though there’s a happy ending on the way…?

At least on Groby’s farm she has found a few friends who stand up for her – but friends who have no social standing and, moreover, are women, are certainly no match for Alec. He constantly pursues her, leading her to run away from the farm having received no money whatsoever for the work she has done over the winter: you can imagine how her mother receives that news when she returns. Tess’s father is dying, and Mrs Durbeyfield clearly still holds a grudge against her daughter for not marrying Alec (and thereby improving the situation of the whole family.) She says of Mr Durbeyfield: “You were always his favourite, Tess, in spite of everything.” Lovely.

When Mr Durbeyfield dies, the family are turfed out of their house – they might have been allowed to stay on as tenants, but Tess, the villagers feel, “is not a proper woman”. Alec calls them “miserable hypocrites” and once again offers to help the family – in return for her ‘love’, of course – but she refuses, knowing that to accept would only mean that she would be in his debt. Again. “This purity is a hard cross to bear” he says, “I wonder if you have the strength.” As her friends write in a letter to Angel, his persistence is like a constant dripping that ” will wear away a stone – ay, more – a diamond.”

Ah Angel. He is back – repentant, guilty, and nearly broken by a disease that may have killed him, but back for Tess. He criss-crosses Wessex looking for her, and receives a rather cold reception from Mrs Durbeyfield, who ominously (there we go again) suggests that the family no longer need his help. Liza-Lu, though, the moral centre of the family when Tess is away (you might even say rather more level-headed than her older sister), does tell him that she has gone to Sandbourne. There he finds her, not a maid, but a lady – Alec’s “creature”. The diamond has been worn down, he is too late.

The scene in which Tess kills Alec – driven mad (in both senses) by the knowledge that Angel has returned for her, after Alec had persuaded her that he never would – was impressively filmed. Taken from the point of view of a worker in the hotel, the fight is seen through the keyhole and, true to Hardy’s words, the body is discovered when Alec’s blood seeps through the ceiling.

From this point on, Tess is living on borrowed time, and there are a few minutes which could be the dictionary definition of bitter-sweat: Tess and Angel are reunited, he does not abandon her for a second time despite what she has done, and yet her fate is sealed. In that hugely famous scene at Stonehenge, the police finally catch up with Tess and Angel. Time’s up.

This adaptation of Hardy’s novel was never going to completely capture the imagination of the television viewing public, simply because it is too dark, too grim, too unremittingly tragic. There are no quips, no big exciting cameos to be taken by Dame Judi, no “fun”. Cranford it ain’t. But it has been a well-acted, solid production, blessed with a script that kept in all of Hardy’s clever, telling lines which really cut to the core of the novel.

Read more from TV Scoop on the BBC’s production of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and costume dramas in general…