Casanova is irritated by his constantly complaining cell mate Schalon and remembers how he once pretended to be a magician casting a spell to seduce the virgin daughter of an old naive man.

[2] This episode flashes back and forward between Casanova finally managing to escape from his prison cell and him trying to write his memoirs in the Castle of Duchcov near the end of his life as an old, dying man.

Potter had been after a subject for his first drama serial and found in Casanova a suitable figure to continue the themes of sex, memory and redemption that had influenced much of his previous work.

As a result, Potter's Casanova is far different from other interpretations of the character; he suffers from tristitia post-coitum (literally, the sadness after sex) and considers his reliance on women for sexual satisfaction a weakness.

Clean-up TV campaigner Mary Whitehouse, who regularly found fault with Potter's work, thought the first two episodes "boring" and believed the third used a kind of Playboy flashback photography.