COMING ATTRACTIONS

The Pursuit of Love Trailer: Lily James and Emily Beecham Are ’40s-Era Gal Pals

Lily James and Emily Beecham in The Pursuit of Love
Courtesy of IMDb

Take one look at the stone castle 12 seconds into the first full-length trailer for The Pursuit of Love, and you just might mistake the scene for one out of Bridgerton or Downton Abbey. But the three-part BBC One series’s main storyline is much less complicated: It mainly focuses on a single relationship, between the close-knit cousins Linda (Lily James) and Fanny (Emily Beecham).

Just like in Nancy Mitford’s 1945 romance novel of the same title, the pair fumbles its way through adulthood, love, and marriage in the 1940s-era English countryside. While U.K. viewers have been familiar with the plot since early May—the Guardian notably gave it a five-star review, calling it “absolutely glorious”—the trailer that dropped Wednesday is the most Americans have seen ahead of its Amazon Prime premiere later this summer.

“I want to escape and have fun and have high heels and be loved,” Linda bemoans to Fanny. “Don’t you just ache for life to be exciting?” The latter isn’t so sure: “I’d like to observe exciting things.” Linda’s mustachioed father, played by Dominic West, is definitely in Fanny’s camp: “They have everything they need here,” he says at dinner while wearing a Santa hat. “Why would they want to leave?” (The series first started making waves last fall, when West, who is married, was spotted cozying up with James in Rome while on a break from shooting.)

Linda’s mother, known as “The Bolter” for her commitment to serial monogamy, is played by Emily Mortimer, who also wrote and directed the series. Meanwhile, Fanny’s confidante Lord Merlin (played by Andrew Scott, a.k.a Fleabag’s “hot priest,”) does his best to help his friend out. From the look of it, at least one of the cousins goes forward with marriage—but those in the U.S. will have to wait until July 30 to find out.