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Wessex Tales Season 1 Episodes

Season 1 Episode Guide

Season 1

6 Episodes 1973 - 1973

Episode 1

The Withered Arm

50 mins

In the early 19th century, a young married woman is stricken with a mysterious malady and searching for a cure leads her in to mysteries and tragedy.

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Episode 2

Fellow Townsmen

Barnet has made an unhappy marriage, Downe a happy one. The lives of the 'Fellow Townsmen' become tragically interwoven.

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Episode 3

A Tragedy of Two Ambitions

49 mins

This is the first of Dennis Potter's adaptations from Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). It aired on WESSEX TALES, a BBC2 series devoted to Hardy dramatizations. Hardy was born in Dorsetshire, an area he called Wessex in his writings, including WESSEX POEMS (1898). As in the original short story, two brothers attained respectable positions, but then feel they must do something about their father's lowly status. Five years later, Potter did a BBC2 miniseries adaptation of Hardy's 1886 novel, THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE.

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Episode 4

An Imaginative Woman

Fate brings Ella Marchmill to rent the rooms of a poet she has always admired. Her admiration gradually turns into obsession.

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Episode 5

The Melancholy Hussar

A tragic rural romance between a soldier who hates the service, and the rustic maid whose love could save him.

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Episode 6

Barbara of the House of Grebe

Lord Uplandtowers vows that he will make Barbara his wife. But she has secret plans of her own.

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