The LarkAscending
TELEVISION SERIES
The forces of history, love and music collide, bringing them ‘hope’ on the wings of the Lark.
Synopsis
The Lark Ascending is the story of Marion, England's consummate violinist, and Ewan, her Australian fiancee, who meet and marry on the eve of the First World War, when mankind feared the breaths of the end of time.
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Marion and Ewan are from privileged families and are especially gifted - Marion in music, and Ewan in academic research within sound and mathematics. When Ewan is accepted to study at Magdalen College Oxford, their attraction is an immediate meeting of souls, a union that will be quickly tested by the coming conflict. Marion is given permission by composer Ralph (Raef) Vaughn Williams to play the 'The Lark Ascending', an extraordinary musical composition written for the violin at a series of peace concerts in England and Europe, the purpose of which to push back the approaching tide of militarism.
The journey continues with Alexandra Forsyth-Law, the daughter of Marion Forsyth, the premier violinist of the era, and of Marion's husband and father to Alexandra, Professor Ewan Law; whose contribution to science will be burnt to the annals of time.
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Alexandra, now a celebrated concerto violinist, gives a rousing solo performance in London. In an instant, Royal Albert Hall where Alexandra is playing becomes an exploding inferno, marking the shadows of World War II. The moment will spell eternity in the time between a breath taken, a breath given. Father and daughter will be driven by the other to unveil the greatest moments spanning all emotions felt upon endeavour, set as against the background of blood, fear, faith and courage.
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When Hitler looks down the Guns of Guernsey, Churchill stares right back through the coloured glass of majesty.
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An ancient man with steely blue eyes leans against the burial stone of his wife. On the Cliffs of Dover, the shimmering lights dance across the wings of the Lark, as it darts and dives against the diminishing sun. As in the beginning, the climax flight is a plight towards English shores across the ocean's lapping time.
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The Lark Ascending is a story that transcends time, cradled in the beauty of music and the symbolism of a bird rising and soaring in the wind currents of history.
Ewan by contrast is compelled to do his imperial 'duty' and is enlisted as a code breaker in the War Office. Both characters are manipulated by the establishments they must work with as they seek an authentic and honest place in a world consumed by the darkness of politics and war.
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The story follows how their diverging pathways during the war affect their marriage and friendship until one uniting event, the birth of their daughter, Alexandra, changes their lives and their destiny. When Marion is tragically killed in a car accident at the Austrian border, it is left to Ewan and Alexandra to continue her legacy and maintain the spirit of the Lark, which will hope to the world in the ashes of war.
