Based on the novel by Samuel Richardson

A BBC drama. Clarissa Harlowe (Saskia Wickham) is a young, beautiful and virginal heiress whose virtue is well-known. However, the handsome but ruthless Lovelace (Sean Bean) has picked her as his prey and sets out to seduce her (thereby destroying her). But he has not counted on Clarissa's strength of character and also his own weakness; he very soon finds himself falling in love with her which drives him into ever higher forms of decadence and ultimately his own destruction.