Dramatized by Nick Stafford from Sebastian Faulks’s powerful bestselling novel, set before and during the First World War.

On a single morning 85 years ago during World War I, the British army lost 20,000 men dead and 40,000 wounded or missing.

In 1910, England’s Stephen Wraysford, a junior executive in a textile firm, is sent by his company to northern France. There he falls for Isabelle Azaire, a young and beautiful wife of the factory owner. Six years later, Stephen is back in France, as a British officer fighting in the trenches. Facing death, embittered by isolation, he steels himself against thoughts of love. He experiences the horrors of trench warfare both above ground but also beneath it as he accompanies miners deep underground as they attempt both to plant enormous mines beneath the fortifications of their enemy and deter the latter’s reciprocal efforts.

Episode 1 – France, 1910 – Englishman Stephen Wraysford arrives in Amiens to study textiles. He is fascinated by his host’s beautiful wife.

Episode 2 – France, 1916 – Isabelle has left and Stephen finds himself immersed in one of the bloodiest wars of the twentieth century.

Episode 3 – With very few of his original platoon left, Stephen Wraysford revisits his old haunts in France, now torn apart by the First World War.