While researching the work of author D.H. Lawrence (Kenneth Branagh), Kate (Alison Steadman) begins a romance with a fellow academic, and learns about Lawrence's love affair with the married aristocrat Frieda Von Richthofen (Helen Mirren) in this made-for-television drama. As Lawrence and Von Richthofen fall deeper into their forbidden relationship, Kate grows more familiar with Lawrence's work, such as the sensuous Lady Chatterly's Lover.

England, Summer 1814.
Sharpe returns to England, with his reputation fully restored. He is soon ordered to the North of England to take command of a local militia force in his home town as it is troubled with unrest and machine-breakers. Sharpe finds that he is torn between two sides - that of the corrupt gentry and that of his own people, the rough, tough and spirited masses who are kept down by their superiors. He finds himself faced with one of the hardest decisions of his life.

Great Britain, 1944, during World War II. Relentlessly pursued by several MI5 agents, Henry Faber the Needle, a ruthless German spy in possession of vital information about D-Day, takes refuge on Storm Island, an inhospitable, sparsely inhabited island off the coast of northern Scotland.