Villagers come to collect them and the true horror of the outbreak is gradually revealed. Coupled with warring Chinese factions and a strong anti-British feeling after a massacre, times are tough.
But amid all this, the relationship slowly gets back on course, helped to some extent by a hard-drinking, gone-native British deputy commissioner played in extravagant style by the lovely, roly-poly Toby Jones.
Diana Rigg also turns up looking very much her age playing a Mother Superior running an orphanage.
Norton, an anonymous sort of actor, is perfectly cast as the dull husband who finds some sort of point to his life in fighting not only the cholera outbreak but tackling distrustful villagers.
And Naomi Watts handles her role as frustrated wife quite beauti- fully, her facial expressions often suggesting more than the dialogue.
