Series 1

In 19th-century Venice, a British gentleman befriends a mysterious woman whose presence seems almost otherworldly.

Four distinguished visitors arrive separately at the castle of the beautiful, widowed Countess Ilona, whom they haven't seen in many years. But she has surprises in store...

Having lured the four men who ruined her life to her isolated castle in 'the remotest corner of that part of my country the prudent traveler never visits', Countess Ilona exacts a terrible revenge.

A repressed, neurotic Englishman becomes obsessed by a mysterious beauty. Is she all she seems? Is he?

Could one of the two middle-aged sons of the famous Lady Sybil be a deranged serial killer — and, if so, which one?

An unhappy child in an affluent but dysfunctional Victorian household acquires both a sharp-eyed new governess and a new, unusually large doll, by which she's strangely fascinated.

A British literary critic and his family visit the Villa Diodati in Switzerland, where, decades earlier, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Events indicate that perhaps the famous story was not simply a work of imagination...

A young man describes his amorous encounter with, and escape from, a vampiric lady in Eastern Europe. But if this all happened so long ago, why does the storyteller still seem so youthful?