Hi, my first post. This series has a cheating fiance, and then as a married woman she's a cheating wife. Cinematically it's a fine production,. The highlight has to be the performance of Rebecca Hall, she's gorgeous in this, and her character is put on earth to torment her poor husband.
Parade's End (2012, HBO), miniseries 5 episodes.
Set in England just before WW1. Benedict Cumberbatch, an English gentleman, falls for a beautiful, pregnant woman (Rebecca Hall). The offspring might not be his but he's smitten with her and he proposes. The night before her wedding, she cheats on Cumberbatch. The wife is chaos and cruelty to her husband's calm decency. A few years later she's bored and runs off to France with the man she cheated with.
The husband believes a gentleman should not abandon his wife by divorcing her and he takes her back. The husband by chance meets a young woman (Adelaide Clemens) who is everything his wife is not - kind, loyal, and politically active as a suffragette and pacifist. They're taken with one another, but the husband's principles will not let him even kiss her. His wife feels shame for acting like such a slut to her good husband and swears to her mother to remain chastely at her husband's side. But her husband's kind indifference to her nonsense bothers her a great deal, and she also swears to torment her husband for his kindness.
The wife succeeds in making her husband's life hell as his reputation is slowly ruined, but due his principles he finds it beneath him to answer the gossip and slander. WWI breaks out and the husband volunteers for the army as a Captain, eventually serving in the trenches. Over the course of the war he dreams of the young suffragette, and she of him. The wife hates them both, not wanting to lose her husband to the young woman. Due to her connections, she's able to visit her husband in France and he's given a room next to hers in a hotel. She looks ravishing and in her bedroom she makes it clear she wants her husband. He apologizes, thinking of the suffragette and perhaps of his wife's cruel actions over the years to him and refuses sex with his wife.
Back in England, the wife realizes after her husband refused her in France he will never love her again. She gives up her chaste ways and beds the man who likely fathered her offspring.
The war ends, the husband has survived and returns home. His wife in a last play to keep him ensnared in the marriage, pretends she has cancer. He's having none of it, leaves her at the family estate and heads for London. The suffragette learns he's in London and runs from her home to see him. He tells her he'll never divorce his wife, and she won't divorce him. The suffragette doesn't care, tacitly agreeing to be his mistress.
They walk into his flat, and who is waiting but the dragon lady, his wife. The wife again tries to play the cancer card, the suffragette screams at her she's a liar. This is the moment of truth for the husband... he tells his wife its finally over. The wife insults both her husband and his soon to be mistress, but realizes the game is up, and slinks away after wishing them happiness.
That evening the suffragette hosts a reunion of the husband's army buddies. Things have finally turned for our hero the husband, the reunion is a joyful evening full of friends who admire his service with them in France. The husband and suffragette have a night of tender lovemaking.
A final scene has the wife riding in the park with a General officer and she asks him if he'll marry her if she divorces her husband. Implying her husband will now be free to marry his true love, the young suffragette.
Edit - Unfortunately I can't find a free streaming link. Might require a subscription to HBO or BBC. I streamed it with an HBO subscription.
