A Passionate Woman

Season

2010

UK

6.6

A mother's romance in the 1950s and its aftermath decades later, exploring the evolution of female roles.

Episode List

S1 • E1

Episode #1.1

Leeds, Yorkshire, England in the late 1950s :- Betty lives in a cold,damp flat in a large Victorian house with her husband Donald and baby son Mark. Donald is loving and industrious and anxious to make enough money to get them moved into their own house but Betty sees him as unromantic. Another young couple move into the house, Moira and her Polish husband known as Craze. Craze has some very unsavoury friends and a distinct dark side. However when Betty and her sister are at the local dance-hall she agrees to dance with him. They then begin a sexual affair which is brought to an abrupt halt when Moira shoots him dead.

S1 • E2

Episode #1.2

A quarter of a century later,Mark is due to marry girlfriend Jo. Betty,who has given Mark the love she once reserved for Craze, is doubly shocked as not only are the young couple moving to Australia but she suspects that Jo, who is adopted, may be Moira and Craze's daughter. Jo introduces her to Ingrid,who is her real birth mother, through whom she re-encounters Moira - on the day of Mark's wedding. Moira delivers some home truths about Craze's dishonesty and adultery which Betty refuses to accept, climbing up onto the roof of her house until Moira has gone. A crowd gathers but she is eventually rescued by Donald,who tells her he knew all about Craze and tolerated it because it made Betty happy,which is all he ever wanted because,although he was not one for romantic gestures, he truly loved her. Betty comes to appreciate the difference between passion and love and, after the wedding, goes for a romantic air-balloon trip with Donald.