Farrah Fawcett earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her portrayal of Francine Hughes in the television movie The Burning Bed. The film is structured as a series of flashbacks while Francine's character endures a murder trial after she poured gasoline on her sleeping spouse and burned him to death. Her husband Mickey (Paul Le Mat) drove her over the edge after years of physical and emotional abuse when he rapes her.

This is the fact-based story of an aristocratic woman who defies Victorian society to reform hospital sanitation and to define the nursing profession as it is known today. After volunteering to travel to Scutari to care for the wounded soldiers, who are victims of the Crimean war, she finds herself very unwelcome and faces great opposition for her new way of thinking. However through her selfless acts of caring, she quickly becomes known as 'The Lady with the Lamp', the caring nurse whose shadow soldiers kiss.