LIGHTS, camera, action - once again Dorset has been captured on the big screen.

It follows the filming last week of Morris - A Life with Bells On, starring Sir Derek Jacobi, which transformed Sandbanks into Venice Beach, California.

But stunning coastline, lush countryside and dramatic landscapes have been drawing TV and filmmakers to Dorset and the New Forest since the 1940s.

It was the 1967 adaptation of Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd that became the gold standard for local film-making.

Dorset's landscape was to be as much the star of the movie as Julie Christie and Terence Stamp. As the three suitors vie for the heart of Bathsheba Everdene, Dorset was shown in all its glory in no fewer than 20 locations.

The grand Victorian folly of Horton Tower, between Verwood and Wimborne, was the location for the brutal cockfighting scene; Shaftesbury's famous Gold Hill stood in for Casterbridge; and Maiden Castle hosted the sword fight between Christie and Stamp.

Another adaptation of one of Hardy's novels, The Woodlanders, which starred Rufus Sewell, was partly shot on the Breamore Estate near Fordingbridge. Jane Austen's Emma starred Gwyneth Paltrow and Toni Collette, and featured the village of Evershot, transformed into a 19th Georgian settlement.

The area's spectacular manmade landmarks have also made an impression, especially when a touch of class was needed.

Breamore House near Fordingbridge provided the ideal setting for Anthony Trollope's The Barchester Chronicles. Athelhampton House, near Puddletown, hosted both Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine for the psychological thriller Sleuth in 1972.

Albert Finney not only starred in the 1963 Oscar-winning Tom Jones, which had a stag hunt scene filmed at Cerne Abbas and Cranborne House as Tom's stately pile, but returned more than 20 years later to Milton Abbas and Sherborne schools to star as a weary schoolmaster in The Browning Version.

But it is not only the area's classic buildings that provided interest. Stanley Kubrick chose the Italian Gardens at Compton Acres for the backdrop of historical drama Barry Lyndon.

Meanwhile, the striking image of Meryl Streep walking out to the edge of the famous Cobb in Lyme Regis in the 1981 adaptation of The French Lieutenant's Woman eventually eclipsed the rest of the movie.

However, Dorset's days as a spectacular backdrop could be numbered after the 1995 adaptation of Jude was shot in the north of England, Scotland and even New Zealand because of the lack of wide open locations in Dorset - blamed by the director on the overdeveloped countryside.

Luckily the area still provides the muse for maverick director Ken Russell, ever since he settled in the New Forest. Bournemouth's Russell Cotes museum was used for a 1976 biography of Rudolph Valentino starring Rudolf Nureyev, while Russell upset the residents of Worth Matravers in 1993 when he drew a graphic representation of manhood on a church wall.

There have even been plenty of less-than-strictly historical uses for the local area. Poole Quay and New Quay Road might not remind you of a Norwegian town but that is precisely what they were decked out to look like in the 1965 Kirk Douglas thriller The Heroes of Telemark.

Co-star Richard Harris also kept up the habit of a lifetime and soon adopted the Jolly Sailor as his watering hole, making frequent trips to the pub during the filming with superstar Douglas in tow.

Specially shot footage of Poole Harbour also featured in Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn's Oscar-winning movie The African Queen, with the harbour remarkably doubling for African waterways. But, alas, neither star came to the town, with the footage being shot by a small second unit.

The county is as popular as ever with TV. Once again both Thomas Hardy and actor Alan Bates were to have a pivotal role in Dorset's finest television moment. The acclaimed 1977 production of The Mayor Of Casterbridge was the ideal counterpart to Far From The Madding Crowd, boasting fine performances from Bates as Michael Henchard and Anne Stallybrass as the wife who returns to haunt him.

With the streets of Dorchester - the location of Hardy's Casterbridge - too modernised and noisy for filming, Corfe Castle was instead transformed to become the fictional market town.

Corfe Castle was also featured as a painted backdrop in one of the opening scenes of Disney's children's favourite, Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

The Dorset coastline has been used in numerous productions, but none sticks in the memory quite like Mike Leigh's Nuts in May as Roger Sloman and Alison Steadman conducted a camping expedition that took them along the coast from Purbeck to Lulworth Cove.

Lulworth plus Swanage Pier and Studland beaches were also used in the 1997 movie Wilde starring Stephen Fry.

And even 007 saved the world here when Roger Moore took on Christopher Walken's baddie Zorin in A View to a Kill, at the MOD testing ground off Boundary Lane in Christchurch.

Regular drama serials have been rare, although customs and excise drama Harbour Lights made frequent use of locations around Poole.

The BBC's Miss Marple stories starring Joan Hickson made the county's picturesque highways and byways a trademark in recreating the optimistic innocence of the 1950s. The classic Body in the Library was filmed around the former Branksome council buildings in Shillito Road as well as the Royal Bath and Highcliffe Hotels in Bournemouth.

Of course, when it came unusual landscapes, nowhere in Dorset has had as many visitors as the infamous "Wareham sandpit" near Moreton. Whether doubling up for South East Asia for classic prison drama Tenko, or standing in for the Sahara in the BBC's serialisation of Beau Geste, the sandpit seemed ideal whenever any BBC production needed somewhere barren, sun-parched and exotic - and didn't have the budget to go abroad.

And in days when computer graphics and expensive studio sets were out of the question, the sandpit and the surrounding area were the next best thing to an inhospitable alien world.

Blake's Seven could regularly be found trying to overthrow the tyranny of an evil federation from the sandpit, while it was a firm favourite with Doctor Who, being a suitable home planet for the Daleks. In fact, Peter Davison's Doctor was to meet a sticky end in nearby Winspit quarry.

The village of Shapwick, near Wimborne, was a perfect setting for another Doctor Who story, although the vast alien creature dwelling under the church was presumably added by the effects team.

But it is comedy that has made the most impact.

One Foot In The Grave was filmed predominantly in New Milton but made plenty of excursions into surrounding territory - including Victor Meldrew's stint as a doorman at Bournemouth's Norfolk Royale Hotel, opposite the Daily Echo building on Richmond Hill.

The Two Ronnies saw fit to film an 80-minute tribute to the silent movie locally, with the duo bringing slapstick to Poole Park's miniature railway, Swanage Pier and Studland.

Other BBC comedies filmed locally include The Brittas Empire (at Ringwood), Brushstrokes, Two Point Four Children and Waiting For God. Comic Alexei Sayle even managed to create a traffic jam from just eight cars in Poole's Old Town in 1992.

The seaside also provided the setting for two of the most memorable sequences in comedy. Michael Palin emerged as a bearded, rag-clothed castaway from the beach at Studland in the very first opening sequence for Monty Python's Flying Circus. And Leonard Rossiter's Reggie Perrin faked his famous suicide by running out naked into West Bay.