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An anthology series based on the varied stories by W. Somerset Maugham divided into three categories: "Rule Britannia" about colonial life, "Women of the World" which focus on female characters, and "Victims of Fate".
1969
Jack Almond, once a rising star in the foreign office, is found dead in a Malaysian opium den. Beside him is a pile of letters charting his downfall which began when he fall in love with Lady Diana Kastellan.
Knobby and Tom are a pair of best friends in Malaya. They both get married at the same time and when the wives become best friends as well everything seems to be perfect until Knobby and Tom's wife fall in love.
Mrs. Albert Forrester, the writer of high-brow but low-selling poetry and essays, writes a bestselling mystery novel. Where did she find the inspiration and what is the secret behind her marriage to a boring businessman?
A planter's wife shoots down a family friend, claiming that he tried to rape her. But someone very close to the dead man holds a letter, in the woman's handwriting, that casts a very different light on the fatal night's events.
A young man is imprisoned for killing his wife. Was it an accident, as he claims, or was it murder?
While staying at a fat farm, Frank, Arrow, and Beatrice bond over their love of bridge. They become best friends and begin taking annual holidays to Antibes but trouble arises one year when Frank invites her effortlessly thin cousin along.
A woman leaves Japan after learning of her husband's affair. On the voyage to England, she meets a planter dying of a curse placed on him by the lover he left behind. Meanwhile, the ship's doctor is in love with a married passenger.
Lord Mountdrago, the foreign minister, humiliates a political rival in parliament for fun after which the man begins haunting his dreams. As the line between dreams and reality blurs, Mountdrago's guilt starts driving him insane.
A young woman uses her potentially fatal heart condition as a means to lead a life of luxury and indulgence.
A middle-class girl and her working-class fellow are bound by true love in defiance of the wishes of the girl's parents; then the beau is pinched when it's discovered he's been stealing to finance their Sunday outings.
Laura Clayton, a respectable American woman, marries an Italian playboy. At first, their marriage is blissful but after he returns to his old habits of drinking and gambling, Laura becomes more and more drawn towards his father.
A young up-and-coming businessman leaves for Tahiti to earn money and is never seen again. Two years later, his best friend goes after him and finds him living in squalor with the natives.
Still in proper mourning following the death of her husband, a colonial administrator, in the East, a young widow reveals to her stiff upper-class London family that her husband was no paragon but a hopeless drunkard, and that his death was not caused by a tropical fever.
Streaming availability information not available
1970
A woman agrees to emigrate to Malaya with her husband, but colonial life is not what she expected.
A socialite is shocked when her frumpy sister-in-law announces her marriage to a foppish young man. Over the next two years, however, the homebody turns into a popular fashionista.
A missionary, his wife, and a prostitute are among the guests stranded at a tropical hotel during the rainy season.
A French farmgirl is assaulted by a German soldier, but he begins to become obsessed by her.
The prim spinster sister of a missionary in the South Seas determines to reform a rascally beachcomber.
Mark, a new arrival at a Malay colony, befriends Tim and Olive, a pair of unusually close siblings who isolate themselves from the other colonists and speak in their own made-up language.
The president of a South American country changes his country's divorce laws for his own benefit.
A colonial administrator's act of cowardice gets him sent home from the East, but he seems oblivious to the contempt with which he is viewed. Surely his friendly, companionable relationship with his wife seems to him quite unchanged.
A married woman falls for a younger man, and wonders whether to confess to her husband.
Margaret convinces her lover to murder her husband after she becomes pregnant. The murder is investigated by a dogged policeman whose judgment is clouded by his own feelings for the woman.
Parents new to the aristocracy are both displeased and surprised when their elder son, who's never shown much aptitude for or interest in anything, declares that he must become a concert pianist. They agree at last to finance his study of the piano for two years, at the end of which he (and they) will accept the verdict of a recognized expert as to his chances of achieving his dream.
A writer discovers that the superior woman he has long admired from afar is the longtime mistress of her own servant.
A man recuperates uncomfortably at the home of an unpleasant man and his pathetic wife, whose startling tale makes her guest all the more eager to recover his strength and get away from the place.