Birdsong

- Season 1

(2012)

In the trenches in 1916 Stephen Wraysford recalls how,six years earlier aged twenty,he was staying in Amiens with the Azaire family whilst studying draughtsmanship at the unsympathetic Rene Azaire's factory. Rene's hardness has brought his workers out on strike and Rene's younger wife Isabelle takes food to the starving families. Stephen is attracted to her and they begin an affair,leaving Amiens when they are found out. Back in the trenches Stephen is seen as aloof and a loner,his only friend being Captain Michael Weir,an engineer in charge of digging tunnels to ...

Stephen recovers in hospital and returns to the army camp at Amiens. Here he comforts a drunk Jack,desolate after the death of his young son. He also reencounters Isabelle who,after an idyllic few months with him,left to return to her children. She is widowed and wounded by the war and not especially welcoming. Next day an ill-conceived attack on the German trenches wipes out scores of British soldiers and Stephen is again wounded. Two years later he learns that Isabelle has died,weakened by her injuries. He takes part in another abortive task to tunnel under German ...