When Maggie Tulliver (Pippa Guard) falls in love with a man her brother Tom (Christopher Blake) doesn't approve of, it sets off a chain of events that will ultimately decide her romantic fate. Meanwhile, the miserly Squire Wakem (Philip Locke) threatens to run the family mill into the ground. This sumptuous BBC miniseries adapted from George Eliot's classic novel is based largely on the author's own childhood in 19th-century England.