Provenance

Provenance is a big-budget historical drama based on the scheming theft of the Acropolis sculptures by a British aristocrat and his powerful accomplices.

In 1799, Mary Nesbit (the richest heiress in Scotland) marries the penniless Earl of Elgin, Lord Thomas Bruce. After their wedding, Mary is catapulted out of her genteel life in the Scottish countryside into the wily tumult of war and political intrigue.

Initially she stands by her unscrupulous husband, anticipating their ascension as Great Britain’s new power couple. She delicately maneuvers the courts of France and Egypt, but it is in the Turkish Ottoman court where her gamesmanship triumphs. Eventually she secures permission for Bruce to seize prized sculptures from the Ottoman-controlled Parthenon, all in the name of the Crown.

The series takes place in epic locations across the Mediterranean Sea and Europe, from Scotland to Turkey, from Greece to Paris. The characters, whose legacies remain to this day in the British Museums, are a testament to the tyranny and greed of the nineteenth century British Empire.