Star-Crossed LOVERS

Masterpiece romp Tom Jones travels the rocky road to a young couple's happily ever after

- ILEANE RUDOLPH

Tom Jones

SERIES PREMIERE 

Sunday, April 30, 9/8c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org)

DRIPPING JEWELS AND attitude, the fashionable aristocrat sweeps into a mid-18th-century London drawing room, eyeing a handsome young man like a cat stalking a tasty mouse. The great seducer is Lady Bellaston (wittily played by Ted Lasso Emmy winner Hannah Waddingham). Her new target: the naive Tom Jones (an appealing Solly McLeod, Outlander). "She is intoxicated on the spot," Waddingham says. "She thinks, "I shall have him, as she usually does. But then she is utterly derailed by him. He is very much a case apart for her."