Ian Richardson

A young boy is separated from his exiled mother, lives among slaves, and is later reunited with her as they devise to make him Nero, Emperor of Rome.

Sam Lowry is a harried technocrat in a futuristic society that is completely convoluted and inefficient. In his fantasy he dreams of a life where he can escape from the overpowering bureaucracy and spend eternity with the woman of his dreams. The unlikely happens while Sam is trying to rectify the wrongful arrest of one Archibald Buttle; the omnipresent computer that controls everything in the "real" world malfunctions. When this happens, Sam literally meets the woman he is always chasing in his dreams, Jill Layton. However, the mechanical bureaucracy has fingered him for a rash of terrorist bombings, and both Sam and Jill's lives are put in danger.

Based on Wilkie Collins' Victorian mystery of a pair of half sisters whose lives end up caught in a grand conspiracy around a woman dressed in white.