Directed by Stephen Frears. Starring Gemma Arterton and Dominic Cooper. Rated PG. Opens Friday, November 5, at Cinemark Tinseltown

The English pastoral life gets an exquisite send-up in Tamara Drewe, veteran director Stephen Frears’s hugely pleasing adaptation of a slightly darker graphic novel by Posy Simmonds—itself a modern riff on Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. With all these literary layers to peel, one might expect a bookish bent, but that’s only true in the sense that writerly types are at the root of the fun.

Most things here happen in bucolic Dorset, at or near a writers’ retreat run by Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam) and his long-suffering wife, Beth (Tamsin Greig), who does most of the cooking, cleaning, and pampering of guests. This arrangement gives Nicholas, a best-selling hack convinced he’s an actual genius, plenty of time for “mentoring” female fans. Currently, Beth has been getting her own quiet attention from an American Hardy scholar (Bill Camp) currently failing to remember why his hero is so damn interesting.

Into this already pretty kettle flops the title character (Gemma Arterton), who left the mansion next door with size-large proboscis held high and now shows up with a nose job and a swinging career as a magazine journalist. Her sudden return is observed with keen interest by the retreat’s frequently bare-chested handyman (Luke Evans) and with vicious scorn by two local kids (Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie, both terrific) who provide the grumpiest teen chorus since Ghost World.

No one above is thrilled when Tamara hooks up with a hot indie rocker (Dominic Cooper) the girls already fancy like mad. They read, too, the film makes clear, and have their own ideas about how stories should play out. Still, the spirit of Agatha Christie is the heaviest authorial presence; with so many novelists gathered in one place, it’s only a matter of time until someone gets killed, published, or both.