Jason Robards is a man who decides he'd rather be a tree.

When a wealthy scriptwriter and socialite's daughter is murdered, he feels let down by the courts, and so decides to use his powerful position to enable his own form of justice.

Working-class girl Joan Dodd's plan to marry Jack Fowler is thwarted when her mother Gladys interferes. Hoping to improve her daughter's social status, Gladys arranges for Joan to wed her boss Adolphus Pickering while Jack is away at war. Jack arrives home to discover his love is engaged to another man. Who will Joan decide to marry?

A handsome gambler unwittingly becomes guardian of an orphaned, teenaged girl.

Set during the Prohibition era, when wine makers were financially challenged and had to decide whether or not they wanted to cooperate with bootleggers to survive.

When Elfrida Philips abandons London for a country village, she settles in quickly. She is very poor, but has a tiny cottage, her four-legged friend Horace, and friendships of good neighbors. Tragedy upsets her newfound tranquillity, and she takes refuge in a rambling house with a new gentleman friend in Corrydale. But the group proves to be greater than the sum of its ill-fitting parts, and as the solstice passes, and as Christmas approaches, the healing power of love, begins to work its magic. (Filmed at Dunrobin Castle, Golspie, Sutherland)

W. Somerset Maugham introduces three more of his stories about human foibles.

The wife of a greedy man comes back to haunt him after he scares her to death.

Orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.

To earn extra money, a prim schoolteacher takes a second job as secretary to the uncouth owner of a boisterous nightclub.

After two failed marriages, a disillusioned woman returns to her hometown to start life anew.

The story based on a novel by Colleen McCullough focuses on three generations of the Cleary family living on a sheep station in the Australian outback.

A young bride believes her husband has been killed. After a suitable period of mourning, she re-marries. But then her "dead" husband comes back and tries to extort money from her.

1991 television series

Victor and Hillary are down on their luck to the point that they allow tourists to take guided tours of their castle. But Charles Delacro, a millionaire oil tycoon, visits, and takes a liking to more than the house. Soon, Hattie Durant gets involved and they have a good old fashioned love triangle.

To his Victorian London friends, Stephen Lowry is a heartbroken widower. Only his housemaid Lily knows that far from dying of gastroenteritis his wife was slowly poisoned by her husband - information she is happy to use to improve her position in the household and to make sure she stays close to Stephen. As his own prospects improve with a business partnership and a romance more of his own class, Stephen decides that Lily must go. Unfortunately for him, his first attempt gives her even more of a hold over him.

After leaving the British Secret Service, David Somers (played by Trevor Howard) finds work cataloging butterflies at the country house of Nicholas and Jess Fenton. After the murder of a local gamekeeper, suspicion (wrongfully) falls on their niece, Sophie Malraux (Jean Simmons). Somers helps Sophie to escape arrest and they go on the run together. After a cross-country chase they arrive at a coastal city with the intention of leaving the country by ship. All's well that ends well after the true identity of the murderer is revealed.

Marple is invited to London to see her old friend Ruth. Miss Marple was a sort of traveling companion to Ruth and her sister, Carrie Louise. Ruth is worried about Carrie Louise. She doesn't know why, though. Ruth asks Miss Marple to come with her to her sister's estate, Stonygates. Stonygates is a huge manor house, and some of the buildings and the grounds are used by Carrie Louises' current husband, Lewis, as a reformatory for juvenile criminals. Miss Marple meets the people who live there - Carrie Louise's grand-daughter Gina and her malcontent American husband Walter; Stephen and Alex Restarick, Carrie Louise's stepsons by her first marriage; Edgar Lawson, Lewis' mentally unstable secretary; and Carrie Louise's daughter, Mildred, who is jealous of Gina. Soon, Carrie Louise's stepson by her second marriage shows up. He is Christian Guldbrandsen, and he runs the trust which contributes a fraction of the funds used to run Stonygates. He and Lewis talk in private. Later that night, Edgar begins waving a gun around and ranting that Lewis is his father. Lewis takes him to his office where the argument becomes even more heated. After a few minutes, two shots are heard, and then hysterical crying. The door opens to reveal Lewis, unhurt. Edgar missed him. However, the body of Christian Guldbrandsen is discovered, shot. Miss Marple sets out to find the murderer before it is too late for her good friend Carrie Louise.