OUTLANDER'S FRENCH KISS

Ooh la la! Claire and Jamie head to the City of Lights for Season 2 of Starz's sizzling drama

- KATE HAHN

THE BEST FROM OUR ARCHIVES SEASON 2

Season 1 ended with a harrowing rescue mission as Claire (Caitriona Balfe)- now a Fraserpried husband Jamie (Sam Heughan) from the clutches of sadistic British army captain Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies) in Wentworth Prison. Jamie is still traumatized, but the pair immediately leave for Paris, where they will secretly try to prevent the Jacobite Rebellion.

IT'S MIDDAY ON the Prague set of Starz's steamy hit Outlander, and it's so hot that the extras dressed as French aristocrats flick their prop silk fans nonstop. Sam Heughan, the strapping 6-foot-3 redhead who plays dashing 18th-century Scottish Highlander Jamie Fraser, is doing a scene in which he leaps up from a game of chess, runs to his suddenly stricken wife, Claire (Caitriona Balfe), and carries her off to find help.

The heat makes it more of a workout than he bargained for, and when Heughan finally deposits a breathless Balfe out of camera range on the polished floors of Strahov Monastery-standing in for the library of Paris' Palace of Versailles-he breaks into a relieved smile. "I think I've probably dropped Cait a few times over the course of the show," he says.

Fans have been swept (safely) off their feet by the genre-busting drama. Based on Diana Gabaldon's bestselling series of novels-26 million books sold worldwide and counting the show has helped rescue viewers from a TV landscape lacking in epic love stories.