Doctor Zhivago (TV Serial) - Plot

Plot

The story begins in Tsarist Russia in the early 1900s and is set primarily against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent Russian Civil War of 1918–1921. At its core is Larissa Guishar Antipova, a young woman from Moscow who has a profound effect on three men who become enamored with her.

Victor Komarovsky, an unctuous, wealthy businessman with political connections, is involved in a casual affair with Lara's bourgeois dressmaker mother Amalia, who encourages her teenaged daughter to accept his invitation to dinner in an attempt to retain his financial support of her household. Initially Lara is repelled by the thought, but she finally accepts and eventually uses her sexual power to seduce and ultimately control him.

Idealistic student Pasha Antipov marries Lara, and the two have a child. It is assumed he is killed in World War I, but he embraces Bolshevism and later emerges as Strelnikov, an infamous Red Army general who seemingly has no concern for his family.

The title character is poet and doctor Yuri Zhivago, who first sees Lara from the window of a café. The two meet when he and his mentor are called to minister to Amalia after she attempts suicide in response to her daughter's relationship with Victor Komarovsky, and encounter each other again when Lara tries to shoot Komarovsky at a Christmas party. Zhivago eventually marries his cousin, Tonya Gromeko, with whom he was raised after his father, who was involved in shady business dealings with Komarovsky, killed himself. He and Lara are reunited in a makeshift field hospital, where she is serving as a nurse while searching for her missing husband. The two fall in love but do not consummate their relationship until after the war, when Zhivago and his family move to his uncle's family estate near Yuryatin, a remote village in the Ural Mountains where Lara is living with her daughter.

Zhivago is captured by red partisan fighters who need him to be their medic. Lara is called to serve as the midwife when Tonya is ready to deliver her second child, and Tonya realizes who she is. When it becomes clear they are fighting a lost cause, Zhivago abandons the red partisans and treks across the mountains to Lara's house, where she nurses him back to health. Meanwhile, Tonya, her children, and her father have returned to Moscow. Pursued by Komarovsky, now a leader in the Communist party, Zhivago, Lara and her daughter flee to Varykino. Months later Komarovsky, still obsessed with Lara, arrives and offers them safe passage out of Russia. They initially refuse, but Komarovsky persuades Zhivago it is in Lara's best interests to leave because of her connection to Strelnikov, who has fallen from grace and lost his position in the Red Army. Zhivago convinces Lara, who is expecting their child, to leave with Komarovsky, telling her he will follow her shortly.

Strelnikov, now a hunted man, arrives at Varykino in search of his family soon after they leave with Komarovsky. Zhivago assures him Lara and his daughter are safe, and Strelnikov kills himself.

Zhivago returns to Moscow and learns his wife, son, and father-in-law were removed from their home and their location is unknown. Several years later, while sitting in a café, he sees a young boy who reminds him of himself as a child passing on the street with his mother, who he realizes is Lara. Before he can reach the pair, he suffers a fatal heart attack. Lara brings young Yuri to view his father's body, and as the two near their home, she realizes that Joseph Stalin's NKVD is waiting to place her under arrest. Pretending they're playing a game, she urges her son to run away as quickly as he can before she surrenders to the authorities.