Bridget Jones is working as a TV host and still dating her new love, barrister Mark Darcy, for a perfect six weeks. But Bridget is jealous of the time Mark spends with a gorgeous co-worker Rebecca and, despite a vacation meant to smooth things over, ends their relationship. On assignment in Thailand with her disreputable ex, Daniel Cleaver - claiming to be a reformed man - they have a short dalliance, and she is arrested at the airport and temporarily jailed on the false accusation of drug smuggling before Mark, seemingly indifferent, comes to the rescue.

After breaking up with Mark Darcy five years earlier, Bridget Jones' happily-ever-after hasn't quite gone according to plan. Fortysomething and single again, she decides to focus on her job as top news producer and surround herself with old friends and new. For once, Bridget has everything completely under control. Then her love life takes a turn - while a weekend away at a music festival, she meets a dashing American named Jack, who is everything Mark is not, and spends a night with him. A week later, she runs into newly-separated Mark, and has a one-night dalliance. In an unlikely twist, she finds herself pregnant, but with one hitch - she's not sure of the identity of her baby's father - Mark or Jack.

Alan Burmister leaves Devon on a secret gun-running expedition immediately after his engagement to Mary Perrin is announced; he returns at Christmas to find himself accused of the murder of Ivor Connel, a moneylender. Mary's father had always hoped that his daughter would marry John Worrall, a rising barrister. Worrall is briefed for the defence, but when he loses the case and Alan is condemned to penal servitude for life, no one but the judge realises that he has not made use of the best piece of defence evidence...