The series tells the legendary love story of Canadian singer and poet Leonard Cohen, and his muse Marianne Ihlen who inspired the titular song. It’s an intimate tale of two lonely people falling in love during a period of their life when they are trying to figure out who they are and their place in the world, while one is becoming one of the most famous singers of all time.
The story follows the two lovers around the world — spanning Norway, Greece, New York and Montreal — with the majority of the series filmed on the Greek Island of Hydra, where Cohen and Ihlen lived in the 1960s. There, they joined legendary Australian novelists Charmian Clift and her husband George Johnston, the matriarch and patriarch of a bohemian group of writers, artists, poets and outcasts who were exploring a new world of free love, drugs and artistic freedom, but also experiencing the rivalries and jealousy that accompanied their intense, interwoven lives.