Episodes
From Chaucer's original collection, the producers chose six tales:
| # | Title | Starring | Directed by | Written by | Original airdate | Viewers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Miller's Tale | James Nesbitt, Dennis Waterman, Billie Piper, Kenny Doughty | John McKay | Peter Bowker | 11 September 2003 (2003-09-11) | 8.18 million |
| John runs a pub in suburban Kent. He hosts a regular Karaoke night, where his much younger and beautiful wife Alison is queen bee. One night a smooth talking stranger, Nick (James Nesbitt), arrives claiming to be a talent scout and declaring that Alison has what it takes to be a star. Alison is drawn to him by the promise of fame, but his motives are not quite what they seem. | ||||||
| 2 | The Wife of Bath | Julie Walters, Paul Nicholls, Bill Nighy | Andy de Emmony | Sally Wainwright | 18 September 2003 (2003-09-18) | 7.86 million |
| Fifty-three-year-old Beth Craddock is a successful television actress who still believes in Mr Right, despite a number of failed marriages behind her. When her husband of sixteen years leaves her for another woman, she finds comfort in the arms of her 22-year-old co-star Jerome. They fall passionately in love, but behind the smiles and laughter the pressures of their age difference are never far away. | ||||||
| 3 | The Knight's Tale | John Simm, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Keeley Hawes | Marc Munden | Tony Marchant | 25 September 2003 (2003-09-25) | 5.44 million |
| Ace and Paul are two young, working-class prisoners who have been best friends since childhood. When they both fall in love with the same woman, Emily, a teacher at their prison, their friendship is torn apart and they become bitter enemies consumed by jealousy. When Ace has served his sentence and Paul makes an escape from prison events hurtle towards a tragic conclusion. | ||||||
| 4 | The Sea Captain's Tale | Om Puri, Nitin Ganatra, Indira Varma | John McKay | Avie Luthra | 2 October 2003 (2003-10-02) | 6.22 million |
| A film noir set in the Asian community of Gravesend. Jetender is a wealthy money-lender and importer/exporter: an Asian 'Godfather' figure to his community. He goes into business with the young Pushpinder who falls in love with Jetender's beautiful and extravagant wife, Meena. Meena claims that Jetender is a tyrant who makes her life hell. Pushpinder and Meena begin a passionate affair and Pushpinder borrows money for Meena from her husband. Slowly, though, Pushpinder starts to learn the truth about Meena and her manipulative, lying ways. | ||||||
| 5 | The Pardoner's Tale | Jonny Lee Miller, William Beck | Andy de Emmony | Tony Grounds | 9 October 2003 (2003-10-09) | 4.4 million |
| The local community of Rochester, still in shock after a girl was raped and murdered the previous year, launch a search for missing teenager, Amy. Arty, Colin and Baz are three unemployed drunken wasters who try to cash in on the search, falsely starting a collection for all the volunteers. But their greed and treatment of a girl called Kitty, who's desperate to find the missing Amy, proves to be their downfall. | ||||||
| 6 | The Man of Law's Tale | Andrew Lincoln, Nikki Amuka-Bird | Julian Jarrold | Olivia Hetreed | 16 October 2003 (2003-10-16) | 4.3 million |
| Constance is a Nigerian refugee found on a small boat in the Chatham docks by a couple, Mark and Nicky, who take her in. A devout Christian, Constance cannot remember what has happened to her. At church a young man, Terry, falls for her. But the feelings are not mutual, as Constance is falling in love with Mark's boss, Alan. When Constance rejects Terry's physical advances, his violent revenge has tragic consequences for all involved. |
Read more about this topic: The Canterbury Tales (TV Series)
Famous quotes containing the word episodes:
“What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men’s existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)