The Chatterley Affair

The Chatterley Affair is a BBC television drama, produced by BBC Wales and broadcast on BBC Four on 20 March, 2006. It is an account of the obscenity trial surrounding the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960. Written by Andrew Davies and directed by James Hawes, it draws heavily, and accurately, on the court reporter's notes (published by Penguin as The Trial of Lady Chatterley) for scenes that take place within the courtroom but also presents entirely fictitious scenes involving the deliberations of jury members. These were, like all jury deliberations under English law, unmonitored when they took place.

The Chatterley Affair stars Louise Delamere and Rafe Spall as two fictional jurors who become lovers during the course of the trial; their brief relationship taking, and reflecting aspects of, the novel's own narrative and themes. The script chooses to invert the novel's central conceit by showing a relationship between a worldly woman and a naive man, rather than the other way around.

Also featured are numerous real-life participants in the trial, such as judge Mr Justice Byrne (played here by Karl Johnson), prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones (Pip Torrens), defence lawyer Gerald Gardiner (Donald Sumpter) and sociologist Richard Hoggart (David Tennant).

The scenes set in the Old Bailey were filmed in the disused Kingston Crown Court at Kingston Town Hall.

DVD release

The Chatterley Affair is available on DVD in the UK, distributed by Acorn Media UK.

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