Begins with the slaughter of Bethlehem's innocents under orders from a paranoid King Herod. Go back a year to the prophecy that informs Zechariah that his wife, Elizabeth, will bear a child. Elizabeth's cousin, the adolescent Mary, struggles with her family to make ends meet and is promised to the carpenter Joseph. Mary is told by the angel Gabriel that she will carry, while still a virgin, the long-awaited Messiah who will liberate the Jews from...

Set in the lower echelons of 1860s Paris, Therese Raquin, a sexually repressed, beautiful young woman, is trapped into a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin Camille by her domineering aunt, Madame Raquin. After she meets her husband's alluring friend Laurent, she embarks on an illicit affair that leads to tragic consequences.