Featuring Alan Rickman in his breakthrough role. A dream cast brings Anthony Trollope's Barchester novels charmingly to life in this engaging production from the golden age of Masterpiece Theatre. Alan Rickman (Harry Potter films) is featured in his breakthrough role as the odious Obadiah Slope. The community of Barchester is shaken from its cozy complacency when a newspaper's crusade against the Church of England's practice of self-enrichment misfires. Overnight, Rev. Harding (Donald Pleasence - The Great Escape) becomes a pawn in a battle between his younger daughter's beau, John Bold, and his older daughter's husband, Archdeacon Grantly (Nigel Hawthorne - The Madness Of King George). Little do they realize that the worse is yet to come, until a regime change delivers Barchester into the hands of a most unholy trinity: the weak-willed Bishop Proudie, the domineering Mrs. Proudie, and the insufferable Rev. Obadiah Slope.