Gemma Arterton stars as a London journalist who makes a spectacular return to the English village where she grew up in Stephen Frears's comedy Tamara Drewe. (Peter Mountain/Sony Pictures Classics)

In 1985, director Stephen Frears gave us My Beautiful Laundrette, a comedy about contemporary Britain that was fresh, bold and irreverent. It was, among other things, one of the first films to feature a steamy love affair between two attractive young men. The fact that one was a white racist working-class lout and the other a savvy South Asian entrepreneur made it all the more provocative.

A newspaper serial squeezed into the two-hour confines of a feature film, Tamara Drewe comes off as both contrived and inconsequential.

Cut to 2010 and we have Frears’s latest, Tamara Drewe, which somehow manages to feel older than My Beautiful Laundrette. Although it’s set in a present-day English village and stars rising ingénue Gemma Arterton, it’s the kind of thing you might have stumbled upon while switching channels on British telly a few decades ago. Think of an updated Butterflies or The Good Life.

Indeed, Tamara Drewe might have worked better as a television show. It’s based on a cartoon series by Posy Simmonds that began running in the London Guardian in the autumn of 2005. It was only two months after the London transit bombings, which must have made a retreat to the petty pitfalls of village life – boredom, gossip – seem very attractive. I can see its soap opera plot spinning out amiably over numerous episodes, its characters endearing themselves over time. Unfortunately, Frears and screenwriter Moira Buffini have squeezed it into the two-hour confines of a feature film, where it comes off as both contrived and inconsequential.

Arterton stars as the title character, a successful young London journalist who returns to her home village in Dorset to sell the family house after the death of her mother. The place is next door to Stonefield, a farm and writers’ retreat run by the Hardiments, whose gardener, Andy Cobb (Luke Evans), happens to be Tamara’s ex-boyfriend. Back in their teen years, handsome Andy dumped Tamara when she was still an ugly duckling with a nose to rival Cyrano’s. Now, flaunting a pert new proboscis courtesy of rhinoplasty and a saucy pair of Daisy Dukes, she seems bent on making Andy regret his decision.

In the process, she also becomes a magnet for the unquenchable lust of Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam), an egotistical crime novelist who regularly leaves his long-suffering wife Beth (Tamsin Greig) to take care of Stonefield, while he engages in affairs with women half his age. The devoted Beth, however, remains blind to her spouse’s sleazy nature – and to the interests of gentle Glen (Bill Camp), a visiting American scholar trying to write a book about Dorset native Thomas Hardy.

The real trouble starts when Tamara meets – and quickly falls into bed with – Ben Sergeant (Dominic Cooper). He’s the glamorously moody drummer for a popular rock band that’s come to the countryside to play a Glastonbury-type festival. Ben is the idol of local bored schoolgirl Jody (Jessica Barden), whose stalker-like obsession knows no bounds. Motivated by jealousy and a love of mischief, Jody pulls a nasty prank on Tamara that has even nastier consequences.

Simmonds’s story is a partly a lighthearted homage to Hardy’s novel Far From the Madding Crowd, with Tamara as a contemporary variant on the book’s independent heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, who finds herself torn between three men. (The ubiquitous sheep in the novel have been replaced by a herd of cows that end up playing a tragic/farcical role in the outcome.) But while Bathsheba is a compelling fictional character, Tamara is shallow and not particularly interesting. She’s simply a sexy catalyst for events. I enjoyed Arterton more in the lousy Prince of Persia, where at least she had some personality.

Her co-stars are more fun. Allam (who was in Frears’s The Queen) is deliciously despicable as Nicholas, a smarmy rat who’s used to getting all the cheese. Cooper is spot-on as the kohl-eyed Ben, a foppish rock star who is just a shade or two subtler than Russell Brand’s Aldous Snow. Greig, meanwhile, is sympathetic as the betrayed Beth and Camp is charmingly milquetoast as the roly-poly prof who adores her even more than her baking.

Frears’s direction is workmanlike, making only perfunctory nods to the film’s comic-strip origins with the occasional use of split screens and interior monologues. Where a young director like Scott Pilgrim’s Edgar Wright takes a dizzying delight in sedulously replicating the look and conventions of a graphic novel, Frears can’t be bothered.

The indifference is catching. Tamara Drewe’s mild pastoral satire is perfectly pleasant entertainment, but there was a time when we expected more from Frears.

Tamara Drewe opens in Toronto and Vancouver on Oct. 29.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBC News.