I’ve never read Stella Gibbons’s popular English novel of 1932a parody of the romantic rural novels that Mary Webb wrote during the 20sbut director John Schlesinger and adapter Malcolm Bradbury have gotten plenty of enjoyable mileage out of it. An aspiring writer, recently orphaned, decides to soak up material by moving in with her rural relatives in Sussex, where she has a big effect on the archaic local customs. Produced jointly by the BBC and Thames Television; with Joanna Lumley, Rufus Sewell, Ivan Kaye, Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry, and Sheila Burrell (1995). 95 min. (JR)