The Cazalets

Episode 1

Episode #1.1

Fri, Jun 22, 2001

In 1937, the extended Cazalet family gathers for their annual 6-week summer holiday at the family seat, Home Place, in Sussex. Patriarch William Cazalet, affectionately called The Brig, travels down from London to be with his wife Duchy, his three sons Edward, Hugh and Rupert, and his daughter Rachel, and their wives, children, and friends. The Brig and sons Hugh and Edward invite the younger Rupert to join the family timber firm but he declines, preferring to concentrate on his painting. Rupert is married to Zoe and has two children from his first marriage; his teenage daughter Clary hates Zoe to no end. Edward is a philanderer bedding any woman who is willing. His interest in his teenage daughter is anything but fatherly. Hugh and his wife Sybil are about to have a child to join their teenage daughter Polly. In the summer of 1938, they all go to the south of France for their holiday, but war is in the air. Hitler's expansion across Europe and his designs on Czechoslovakia seem to make war inevitable. They rejoice with the rest of the country when Prime Minister Chamberlain returns from Munich declaring "peace in our time." A year later however, all has changed.