Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Holliday Grainger, Richard Madden, James Norton, Jodie Comer, Howard Ward, Elizabeth Rider, Tony Pritchard, Enzo Cilenti, Ian Peck, Eve Ponsonby, Edward Holcroft, Sebastian Gray, Lee Paul Atkinson, Andrew Cronin, Nick Davies, Lisa Jay Jenkins, Dylan Jones, Callum Luke Lewis, Gavin Lee Lewis, Jamie McKee, Ricky Singh.

There is no doubting just how important D.H. Lawrence is to the world of English Literature, his books revolutionised how sex was seen in the modern era and his craftsmanship was enough to bring an ill fated trial against the publishers Penguin Books, one that showed just how out of touch the establishment is with public thinking and yet in the space of 90 minutes a viewer can go from being mildly excited to see how his finest hour in Lady Chatterley’s Lover can be brought to the screen to wondering just how awful it would have been for the writer to have witnesses it being visualised.

The whole look of this particular adaptation was one that was like a beautifully crafted wood, each tree planted in the right place, each pine cone on the floor dressed immaculately and the even the rain water tumbling out of the sky felt as though it was just perfect; it was for show. It hid perfectly the flaws and blemishes created for television and the wild abandon of raw passion that was supposed to be felt was more in keeping with a gentle snooze on a Sunday afternoon beside the fire, every so often taking a moment to pick the remains of a badly made lunch from between your teeth.

This is not the image that sticks in the mind when thinking of D.H. Lawrence’s work, the sense of urgency and love intertwined to create something of a spectacle, not a canvas painting constantly being touched up by an artist wanting to add more colour.

The problem may have lain in the remarkable ability of the 90 minutes to be one of the most P.C. adaptations ever created and one that somehow managed to fall into the realms of pre-World War Two respectability, this is a towering achievement that makes Downton Abbey look like the raciest drama around. The sight of James Norton, even if he was portraying the English stiff upper lip with the same craftsman-like air afforded the woods, carting himself around in an invention that looked as though it had been approved by the D.W.P. to show that even the upper-classes can stoically handle infirmity and disability.

Beautifully captured on screen but with the understanding that it was all top layer, that it didn’t bear the responsibility of Lawrence’s other adaptations that really get beneath the skin of the author’s work, namely the superb 1988 version of The Rainbow to which Imogen Stubbs excelled or even the 2006 French film version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover starring Marina Hands.

The obscenity trail in the 1960s missed a trick when the prosecuting Council Mervyn Griffith-Jones asked if it was the sort of book you would allow your wife and servants to read; the remarkably short sighted and out of touch comments wouldn’t be out of place today but instead it would be, would you really want to sit down with the family on a Sunday night and wishing you hadn’t bothered.

Ian D. Hall