With MASTERPIECE’s joyful and big-hearted Tom Jones, viewers can look forward to what the scriptwriter calls “the mother of all rom-coms.”

Based on the bestselling 1749 novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding, the four-part romantic comedy tells a delightful story of Tom and Sophia’s complicated and against-all-odds romance.

“The novel is sexy and fun; it’s also a dramatic rollercoaster,” said writer Gwyneth Hughes.

While many Americans know the story from the Oscar-winning 1963 feature film starring Albert Finney, the MASTERPIECE series puts a new spin on the tale.

“In the film, Tom Jones was a real cad,” said Susanne Simpson, executive producer of MASTERPIECE. “In this version, Tom is an innocent young man who doesn’t know how the world works.”

MASTERPIECE’s creative team also reimagined the character of Sophia, who is now the child of a British plantation owner and a Jamaican slave and has been brought to England to live with her grandfather and be educated among aristocrats.

“We worked with historical consultants who found that there was precedent for a mixed-race woman living with her father’s family in the British countryside,” said Simpson. “The consultants helped us create an accurate backstory that presents Sophia as a woman with her own agency — that’s different from the book.”

Simpson expects that viewers will be surprised at the humor in the series, which draws on Fielding’s merciless satire about British class structure.

“MASTERPIECE is well known for its adaptations of great literature and many of those are novels that have very serious themes — it’s different for MASTERPIECE to do a show that has a comedic element to it.”

This series represents Simpson’s dedication to both preserving the legacy of MASTERPIECE while keeping it relevant for today’s audiences.

“I'm trying to have a constancy around period dramas and mysteries that our audience can count on, but I'm also trying to experiment a little. For example, our audience found Around the World in 80 Days and loved it,” she said.

“I'm hoping the same will be true for Tom Jones. It's a classic novel, fun and very relevant to younger people today.”

Watch the trailer here.

MASTERPIECE’s Tom Jones premieres on Sunday, April 30 on GBH 2 and the PBS App.