‘Life in Squares’ episode guide

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Life in Squares is BBC Two’s new drama about the Bloomsbury group.

Written by BAFTA Award-winning Amanda Coe (Room At The Top), the three-part serial dramatises the exceptionally close, often fraught relationship of sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, and Vanessa’s enduring, sexually complicated alliance with gay artist Duncan Grant.

> Order Life in Squares on DVD on Amazon.

The cast includes Phoebe Fox as Vanessa Bell, Lydia Leonard as Virginia Woolf, James Norton (Happy Valley) as Duncan Grant, Sam Hoare as Clive Bell, Edmund Kingsley as Maynard Keynes, Ed Birch as Lytton Strachey and Rob Heaps as Thoby Stephens.

 

Episode 1

Monday 27 July 2015, 9pm

> Read our review.

We meet the Stephen sisters in 1905, where a young Vanessa and Virginia are struggling to escape the confines of Victorian England and forge a new life for themselves. Their dream is to find freedom in creativity and live their lives without society’s rules or restrictions.

When their brother’s death rocks their world, Vanessa decides to change her views on marriage and settle down with Clive. Will this marriage prove too much for her unbreakable bond with Virginia? And how will free-spirited Vanessa respond to the challenges of family life and her husband’s infidelity?

Meanwhile, young gay artist Duncan Grant forms a friendship with Vanessa which proves to be one of the most influential of his life. With their love of art and each other uniting them, but kept apart by Duncan’s sexuality, can this companionship stand the test of Bohemian living?

 

Episode 2

Monday 3 August 2015, 9pm

The episodes starts with the celebration of Virginia’s marriage to Leonard Woolf. Now with two young children, Vanessa and Clive have also found contentment in their unconventional approach to marriage.

But when the outbreak of World War I looms, Vanessa decides to move to their country farmhouse Charleston with her children and Duncan. When she develops strong feelings for Duncan, Vanessa is left conflicted – particularly when Duncan invites his lover, David ‘Bunny’ Garnett (Jack Davenport, pictured), to stay at Charleston with them.

Meanwhile Virginia’s health takes a turn for the worse and she overdoses on her medication, putting her marriage under strain. Will their fondness for each other be able to keep Leonard and Virginia’s marriage together?

 

Episode 3

Monday 10 August 2015, 9pm

Twenty years have passed when we rejoin the friends in 1937.

Duncan and Vanessa, now played by Rupert Penry-Jones (Spooks, Silk) and Eve Best (The Honourale Woman, Nurse Jackie) remain at Charleston Farmhouse, painting, living and loving alongside each other, along with Vanessa’s children Julian, Quentin and Angelica. Charleston remains an idyll, a ‘convent dedicated to art’ yet one seemingly under siege from the outside world.

A defiant Julian announces his determination to fight against Franco in the Spanish civil war, while Angelica, who remains unaware of her true parentage, escapes to London to become an actress. While there she becomes close to Duncan and Vanessa’s old friend, David ‘Bunny’ Garnett.

Vanessa’s worst fears are realised when Julian is killed in Spain. Unable to process her grief, she cuts herself off from those around her, with the exception of Virginia, by now enjoying huge public acclaim, who nurses her with great care and compassion.

Cut off from her mother, Angelica finds herself falling in love with Bunny. Duncan and Vanessa are appalled. Not only is Bunny more than 20 years older than Angelica, he was the source of so much anguish in their early years living together at Charleston. Vanessa attempts to reach out to Angelica but her heavy-handed intervention only serves to push her daughter further away.

As the Second World War rages, Virginia finds herself engulfed in mental turmoil while Vanessa and Duncan come face to face with the very human consequences of their own experiments in living.

 

> Order Life in Squares on DVD on Amazon.

Watch the trailer…

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