How ‘Tom Jones’ on ‘Masterpiece’ Flips the Script and Gives Women the Sexual Agency

Masterpiece on PBS’s latest romantic offering is a brand new adaptation of Henry Fielding’s beloved masterpiece Tom Jones. As with other adaptations of the scandalously sexy 18th century novel, Masterpiece‘s Tom Jones follows an uber-charming foundling as he falls in and out of bed with a variety of lady loves…all while he pines for his one true love, Sophia Western (Sophie Wilde). The twist with PBS’s version is that Tom Jones (Solly McLeod) himself is the one being used for sex more often than not.

“Consent becomes a huge thing and it’s his consent that actually is the issue,” Tom Jones showrunner Gwyneth Hughes told Decider during an interview in January at the Television Critics Association’s Winter 2023 Press Tour.

Hughes also revealed that before reading Tom Jones, she assumed “it would all be randy and unpleasant,” but was “blown away” by how funny and romantic the text actually was. She was also surprised that the sexual energy driving the story wasn’t Tom’s, but Sophia’s.

“The sexual energy that drives the story of the book and our show is the sexual energy of an 18-year-old virgin girl,” Hughes said. “It’s Sophia’s. It’s Sophia’s desire for Tom that motivates the whole story, even though she never gets into bed with him until after the credits roll and after they’ve been safely married.”

“I was really struck by that. It’s her desire for him that takes her out of that house, that takes her to London and makes it all happen.”

“All of the women in the show are the ones that instigate the relations, which is interesting and it’s nice giving them the power as opposed to what you usually have,” Tom Jones star Solly McLeod told Decider. “It’s the breaking of gender stereotypes within society and it’s making Tom the vulnerable one who’s naive and innocent and then the women are the ones [instigating sex].”

In the first two episodes of Tom Jones, we see Tom enjoy a youthful dalliance with local girl Molly (Lucy Fallon) that almost turns serious when she becomes pregnant. It’s only after he learns Molly’s been hooking up with multiple partners that Tom is left off the hook, free to pursue his true love, Sophia Western.

However, as Tom and Sophia’s romance heats up, Blifil (James Wilbraham), aka the legal heir of Tom’s beloved guardian Squire Allworthy (James Fleet), conspires against his lowborn foundling. Tom is thrown out of his childhood home and cast into the world, where he soon makes the acquaintance of a fun and flirtatious woman known as Mrs. Waters (Susannah Fielding).

“I think his first kind of relationship with Molly is that young, kind of fun relationship that kind of symbolizes the first relationships that you’d have in life. It seems like good fun. Everything is enjoyable. It’s like it’s new, it’s exciting, and you kind of need something more in the end,” McLeod said. “And then Mrs Waters was a bit of a curveball. He was like, ‘Oh. Shit. Okay.’ And she kind of seduced him in the moment.”

McLeod revealed that they worked with an intimacy coordinator to make each of Tom’s sexual relationships feel different. The scenes with Molly were designed to be “playful,” whereas the ones with Mrs. Waters were designed to feel “seductive and intriguing and mysterious.” When Tom eventually crosses paths with Hannah Waddingham’s Lady Bellaston, their interactions will have a “more sinister feel,” McLeod said. “Like he didn’t necessarily want to be there.”

Hughes explained to Decider that these different sexual energies came from Fielding himself.

“He wrote incredibly strong, interesting, vibrant female characters. He liked women and he was married happily twice — his first wife died — but he was married very happily twice,” she said. “The sexual characteristics of each woman that Tom meets are pretty much there in the book.”

According to Hughes, she and director Georgia Parris wanted to give the story a feminine energy, specifically in the approach to the sex scenes.

“It was a female production. The director was a woman and we all thought we wanted it to be sexy in a promising way rather than in a ‘kit off’ way,” Hughes said. “I think all the lace and the stockings, that’s sexy. And it’s sexy for everybody, but nobody’s getting exploited — except possibly Tom towards the end of it.”

Rest assured, though, no one was exploited in the making of Tom Jones on Masterpiece. “Again, we worked comfortably, all of us. Me and Lucy [Fallon] and Susannah [Fielding] and Hannah [Waddingham]. We all spoke about it before. We were comfortable. We all made it light and fun as awkward as the scenes were sometimes,” McLeod said.

Episode 3 of Tom Jones will premiere on Masterpiece on PBS on Sunday, May 14. All four episodes of Tom Jones are now streaming on the PBS Passport app.