Jane Austen's last novel provides the plot for this earlier Granada miniseries. Set in pre-Victorian England, this movie tells the story of Anne Elliot, who now having lost her "bloom" is re-united with the dashing Captain Frederick Wentworth whose advances she had refused seven years earlier. Now that he has gained both connections and fortune in the Napoleonic Wars, she regrets that her neighbor, the meddling Lady Russell persuaded her to refuse his proposal of marriage. Now as she watches him woo the young Louisa Musgrove, she suffers terribly while he appears to have forgotten entirely his earlier attraction to her. Manners and moires often thwart her strong desire to tell her true feelings, but his true emotions too, are masked by fear and the lasting pain of her rejection.

On a visit to Lyme Regis, it seems that Wentworth, who was engaged to Anne, now has eyes for another.

Anne meets the mysterious Mr Elliot in Bath, but will she marry Wentworth?