Madame Bovary

Season

1975

7.2

TV-14

Emma Bovary is the dreamy, frustrated, unfaithful wife of a French country doctor in this National Emmy-nominated adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's masterpiece.

Episode List

S1 • E1

Marriage

Following the death of her mother, Emma Rouault spends her days dreaming of romance. A focus for her romantic ideals arrives in the form of Dr Charles Bovary and he is soon captivated by her youthful charms.

S1 • E2

First Love

A new start in Yonville coincides with the discovery that Emma is pregnant and the introduction of Leon, a handsome and passionate young law student who quickly becomes Emma's close companion and confidant.

S1 • E3

Lost Love

Initially, Emma is able to continue a double life of extreme contrasts stolen time spent with her lover, Rodolphe, writing to him or dreaming about him is the counterpoint to domesticity. Charles' love for Emma makes him oblivious to her faults and his pride obliges him to indulge her naïveté in purchasing clothes and trappings that are beyond their means. The Draper, M. Lheureux, supplier of these luxuries, increases his profits by luring customers into his web of usury. As Emma's spending expands into expensive presents for her lover, the debts to Lheureux mount. M. Homais, the local pharmacist, suggests to Emma that an opportunity for fame and fortune in the medical field awaits her husband, were he to be persuaded to pioneer an operation on the club-foot of the local ostler.

S1 • E4

Judgement

Emma sinks deeper into the spiral of deceit and, in order to finance presents and trysts in Rouen, deeper into debt with Lheureux. When, on the death of his uncle, Charles is left property, Emma conspires with Lheureux to obtain power of attorney over the estate. Despite fierce opposition from her mother-in-law, she achieves this and continues to fund the illicit meetings with Leon. But, as the debts mount, the love affair dwindles. Lheureux sells on the debt to another moneylender who gives Emma only two days to find enough money to keep him at bay. Recklessly she pawns her daughter's rattle for a night of wild revelry with Leon at the Rouen Carnival. She asks Leon to steal from his employer to pay her debts - he refuses her. In a desperate state Emma visits Lheureux's familiar the lawyer who drew up the power of attorney his answer is to offer her money for her body, which she refuses.