Highly acclaimed BBC production of the now ubiquitous George Elliot's epic of romance, family in fighting and high drama set against the backdrop of the changing political and social face of pre-Industrial Revolution Britain. The arrival in Middlemarch of the new physician, Dr Ludgate, increases bickering amongst the influential and wealthy members of local society, opposed as they are to his new methods. Meanwhile machinations of marriage and political advancement flourish in an atomsphere of apprehension.