Far from the Madding Crowd thank him, he asks if she needs a shepherd. She uncovers her face and reveals herself to be none other than Bathsheba. She has recently inherited her uncle's estate and is now wealthy. Though somewhat uncomfortable, she employs him. Meanwhile, Bathsheba has a new admirer: the lonely and repressed William Boldwood. Boldwood is a prosperous farmer of about forty, whose ardour Bathsheba unwittingly awakens when – her curiosity piqued because he has never bestowed on her the customary admiring glance – she playfully sends him a valentine sealed with red wax on which she has embossed the words, "Marry me".
Far from the Madding Crowd (1998 film) visually striking as the 1967 film -- some of the locations are virtually identical -- and is more naturally rendered dramatically, with a rough language truer to Hardy's blend of poetry and rural speech." Far from the Madding Crowd (1998 film) Far from the Madding Crowd is a 1998 drama television film adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel of the same name. Will Joyner of "The New York Times" wrote a positive review of the adaptation: "Strangely, and to its great credit, this new "Far From the Madding Crowd," which was produced by Granada Television in Britain and WGBH-TV in