Jamaica Inn (1983 TV series)

Did You Know?

• The series dramatizes the cultural trope of wreckers, clipper ship era pirates who used deceptions such as mislocated lights to lure ships to doom.
• The original British broadcast was two episodes totaling 187 minutes.
• For U.S. broadcast, the series was edited to 150 minutes and split into three parts.

Plot

In the early 1800s, Martha Yellan's husband dies at sea when wreckers destroy his ship off the Cornish coast. The shock causes her mental health to decline, and she decides to send her daughter Mary to live with Martha's sister, Patience. Martha dies shortly after, and Mary leaves her hometown of Helston. Patience has married Joss Merlyn, who runs the Jamaica Inn on a lonely stretch of Bodmin Moor. Mary quickly sees that Patience is terrified of her husband, who becomes violent when drunk and whose regular visitors are criminals and ruffians. She also notices illegal activity, with wagons being loaded with goods at night. Her uncle threatens one of his associates, and Mary later overhears a conversation between Joss and someone who might be the gang's leader, suggesting that associate may have been killed. When a wagon carrying prisoners bound for execution breaks down near the inn, a young man helps the prisoners escape. Mary sees this but hides it from the guards. The man turns out to be Jem, Joss's younger brother, who is a horse thief. Later, while walking on the moor, Mary meets Reverend Francis Davey, the vicar of Altarnun, who escorts her back to the inn. When she visits him at his church, she learns he is fascinated by local folklore and mythology. Mary tells him about the illegal activity at the inn, but she only discovers the full truth about the wrecking when her uncle confesses in a drunken stupor. On Christmas Eve, Jem and Mary go to the market in Launceston together, but Jem fails to pick her up with his cart. Mary walks home across the moor in heavy rain and is found by Davey. She tells him her uncle is a wrecker. Davey sends her back in his coach, but the wreckers, led by Joss, intercept it. They take Mary to the coast, where she sees a ship wrecked and the survivors attacked, then return to the inn.