KEY POINTS:
For a romantic hark back to the time when, for the Brits, a European Tour didn't mean a planeload of happy slappers off to a hen party in Prague, it's hard to beat A Room With A View (TV One, last night, 8.30).
"It's odd to think of people like that visiting churches," exclaims naive heroine Lucy Honeychurch in the opening scenes, bemused to find herself rubbing shoulders with the lower orders on her stay in Florence.
The times are a-changing; and in Brit telly land, ITV decided it was time to produce another adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel about a young Englishwoman opening up to life and love as the tight-laced Victorian era was being elbowed aside by the brash and jostling 20th century.
There's an enduring appeal about that Tuscan awakening among the wildflowers, but for many viewers it would be hard to top the Merchant Ivory classic.
ITV answered the question as to whether we need another version by bringing in, naturally, king of the sexed-up adaptation, script writer Andrew Davies.
True to form, Davies has produced a less picturesque, more ironic, saucier and flesh-exposing interpretation, which has been lauded by some as closer in spirit to the novel. What is lost in terms of subtlety and seamlessness is gained in more fun and a stronger sense of realism and the excitement of the new century challenging old sex and class divisions.
Elaine Cassidy delivered a terrific performance as the confused Lucy, struggling to keep her po-faced manners in the face of her attraction to the "unsuitable" George and to work out why fiance Cecil doesn't set her ganglions all a-tingling. Lawrence Fox, in turn, made Cecil much more complex and appealing than simply an effeminate buffoon.
In a nice twist on the central metaphor, this version had the aesthete Cecil offering Lucy an exquisite miniature view of imposing Rome through a peephole in a gate, in contrast to the Emersons' proffered expansive and sensuous view of Florence.
The supporting cast were a bit more patchy, with the comic characters, particularly the ladies, becoming twittering caricatures.
But bringing in the Spalls, father Timothy, son Rafe, to play the plain-talking, passionate Emersons was a stroke of casting brilliance.
There were, however, some bumps and lurches - why was Reverend Beebe a distant acquaintance when first met in Florence but a neighbour back in England? - and turning the novel's hints at homosexuality into a scene with Mr Beebe looking for trade in a back alley in Florence was ludicrously heavy-handed.
As to be expected, Davies delivered more sex and flesh, particularly in that scene demonstrating the peculiar English fondness for swimming in small, brown weedy ponds.
Lucy's conversion to insatiable shagger was further evidence that ours is an age that entirely misses the point of less is more, but the poignant postscript, source of some controversy, certainly brought things back down to Earth.
Its inclusion was justified as representing Forster's later imaginings of what might have become of his characters. And it served both to give this version another point of difference and for Lucy to learn the much sadder modern lesson, that there is seldom a happy-ever-after.