The Mayor of Casterbridge (1978)

Seven parts on BBC2 in early 1978, from Thomas Hardy's novel, with Alan Bates as Michael Henchard, the hay-trusser who sells his wife at a country fair and spends the rest of his life paying for it. Directed by David Giles and filmed entirely on location in Dorset, much of it around Corfe Castle. This is Potter at his most classical, a straight period drama with none of the formal games of his own serials. Pick it for Bates's towering lead and to see how well Potter could serve another writer when he chose to.