Major Scobie is a British official in a West African colony during WWII. Both he and his wife are devout Catholics, and thoroughly unhappy. After he starts an affair with a young girl and then breaks the law to hide it, he's consumed by guilt. Jack Hedley as Major Scobie leads an international cast in this rare much lauded TV serialisation of one of Graham Greene's finest novels. It was one of the nascent Channel 4's early major drama acquisitions. Having said that, La Stampa was less than flattering when it said “It would be easy to understand how a rather novice English producer could simply think: since Greene is our most lively novelist, and since THE HEART OF THE MATTER is one of his most important novels, let's make a beautiful film. But it is in such a temptation there remains the real core of his problem.“