The Glass Virgin

The Glass Virgin is a British three-part television serial, or long TV movie, first broadcast in 1995, starring Emily Mortimer and Brendan Coyle, directed by Sarah Hellings, based on a novel by Catherine Cookson.

Production

Producer Ray Marshall bought the film rights to several of the period works of Catherine Cookson, beginning in 1989 with The Fifteen Streets, which had been turned into a successful stage play. These productions, sponsored by Tyne Tees Television, were very popular and drew between ten and fourteen million viewers each.

Reviewing The Glass Virgin for The Independent, Jasper Rees commented that it "might have been sponsored by the Northumbrian tourist board, as it gives the impression that the region endlessly basks in sunshine."

Outline

The action takes place in the north of England in the 1870s. Annabella Lagrange (Emily Mortimer), the daughter of upper class parents, finds her life crumbling when she discovers a terrible secret. She runs away from home, then meets Manuel Mendoza (Brendan Coyle), a young Irishman she remembers as her father’s departed groom. He is now a traveller, roaming Northumberland in a horse-drawn caravan looking for work, and Annabella soon finds herself travelling with him, but in a separate bed.

Many of the people she meets treat her with suspicion, and she feels she belongs nowhere, so is glad of the understanding of Manuel. Meanwhile, her family, and especially her father Edmund Lagrange (Nigel Havers) are looking for her.