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Mrs Biggs Season 1 Episodes
Season 1 Episode Guide
5 Episodes 2012 - 2012
Episode 1
Episode #1.1
Wed, Sep 5, 201264 mins
In 1957, teenage Charmian Powell has a stultifying home life dominated by her stern headmaster father, so when she meets older, charming Ronnie Biggs--a man with a criminal past--on a train, she sees a means of escape. Ronnie persuades her to steal 200 pounds from the bullion firm for which she works, which they use to elope to the South Coast. However, they are caught and Ronnie returns to prison while Charmian receives a suspended sentence. On his release they marry and have two children and Ronnie vows to go straight and resume his job as a carpenter. But finances are tight and Ronnie's friend Bruce Reynolds comes up with a tempting, highly illegal proposition.
Episode 2
Episode #1.2
42 mins
Along with Reynolds and his gang, Ronnie takes part in a violent attack on the Royal Mail train, stealing over 2 million pounds and bringing home his share of the loot. Charmian is appalled and does not share her husband's view that he will get away with it and is proven right when he is arrested. Despite pleading not guilty he is sentenced to 30 years in prison. The house is beset by journalists and Charmian threatened by a gun-toting stranger demanding a cut of the spoils but rescued by Ruby Wright and her son Alan, friends of the fugitive Reynolds. However, Charmian is disowned by her parents and now feels totally alone.
Episode 3
Episode #1.3
43 mins
Charmian has an affair with Alan but finds herself visiting a back-street abortionist after she falls pregnant. Ruby threatens to tell Ronnie unless Charmian pays her, but Charmian has a better use for her cash: financing Ronnie's escape with fellow convict Eric Flower. Obtaining false passports in the name of Furminger, the family flees to Australia where Ronnie gets hotel work in Adelaide. They are joined by Flower and his wife Julie, with whom Charmian is angry for telling her mother of her location. After giving birth to a third child, Charmian is also unsettled to learn that Bruce Reynolds has been captured.
Episode 4
Episode #1.4
45 mins
After Ronnie's picture appears in an Australian magazine as a wanted man, he and Charmian and the boys move to Melbourne, where she gets a job in a biscuit factory and he works as a foreman on a building site. However, when his picture flashes up on the evening news, he decides to leave the country and go into hiding. Charmian is arrested and the boys put into care, but she raises money for a lawyer by selling her story to the press and is eventually freed and reunited with her sons. She goes to see Ronnie for one last time as he sets sail for Rio de Janeiro, where she and the boys hope to join him.
Episode 5
Episode #1.5
64 mins
Waiting to join Ronnie in Rio, Charmian is devastated when their eldest son Nicky is killed in a car crash, and she smuggles a letter to Ronnie to inform him. She keeps strong by taking a university degree as a mature student while fighting off the unwanted attentions of married Craig. Meanwhile, Ronnie is visited in Rio by Jack Slipper after giving an interview to a tabloid reporter but cannot be extradited as he has impregnated his girlfriend Raimunda, giving him a claim to stay in Brazil. Charmian takes the boys to see him to discuss divorce, on the assumption that they will eventually reunite, but Ronnie is distant and unloving and admits that he would sacrifice the family to stay free. Thus Charmian sees that her two surviving sons must come first and she walks out on Ronnie forever. She reconciles with her parents, but turns down their request that she lives with them and determines to start a new life on her own terms in Australia.
