(2006) In 1960 the publisher of Penguin Books, Sir Allen Lane, was brought to trial at Old Bailey in London in an attempt to ban the sale of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover in an unexpurgated paperback edition for 3 shillings 6 pence, thus affordable to ordinary citizens, because of its alleged obscenity. Screenwriter Andrew Davies respects the facts of the case while fictionalizing the jurors and their deliberations in director James Hawes's BBC-TV production in which two jurors engage in a love affair.

Among the twelve jurors, nine men and three women, is Helena (Louise Delamere), a woman of sophistication, living alone in the process of divorcing her "charming bastard" of a husband, who takes an interest in the man sitting beside her, Keith (Rafe Spall), working-class husband with a pregnant wife.

The prosecutor, Mr Mervyn Griffith-Jones (Pip Torrens), opens the trial by describing Lawrence's novel as "depraved and corrupt," as any person reading it would likely find, for it contains "vulgarity of thought and language" (at least 30 times "fuck" or "fucking" appears in the text) with thirteen episodes devoted to detailing sexual intercourse between a baron's wife and the gamekeeper.

In the jury room the jurors each read a copy of the book. At the end of the second day, Keith after agreeing to follow Helena to her flat, says: "I've never done anything like this before."

Back in the courtroom, the defense attorney, Mr Gerald Gardiner (Donald Sumpter), characterizes the work of fiction in question as an attempt by the author at "restoration of right relations" between human beings in English society, especially between men and women. He then brings numerous witnesses to testify to the novel's worthiness as literature.

In response to the prosecutor's calling the book one of "low merit," a professor of literature explains that Lawrence put four-letter Anglo-Saxon words into a serious context. In the jury room Helena speaks out against a fat, pompous man's dismissal of passages as nothing more than "dirty bits." In her bed with Keith she experiences an orgasm like the fluttering and rippling of feathers inside her.

"Sex turns you inside out," admits Keith beside her, though he feels guilt about being unfaithful to Sylvia. What she doesn't know won't hurt her, Helena offers to console her lover, afraid of losing him from the little world they've created for themselves.

Giving answer to the prosecutor's branding Lady Chatterley as contemptuous of her marriage through her indulgence in adulterous infidelities, a female witness reminds everyone that Lawrence's own marriage lasted until his death and that the baron, incapable of sexual relations and desirous of an heir, gave his wife permission to have an extramarital alliance.

Inspired by Lawrence's lovers, Helena says to Keith: "I think we should try out everything they try out." From the witness stand, in defending the book as a whole as opposing promiscuity, a bishop portrays the sexual act as "essentially something sacred." A Lawrence lecturer, Mr Richard Hoggart (David Tennant), remarks on the novel as "virtuous and Puritanical," "poignant and tender," "moral and spiritual."

A newspaper editor praises the novel for its word pictures of physical love's beauty and goodness, its "redeeming power of sex." In her frank opinion, however, Helena tells Keith that Lawrence's words more often than not sound to her full of "preaching, bullying, and wishful thinking."

While Keith to Helena is animal-like in his guilelessness - "You make me happy" - he criticizes her for using him as in a game for her enjoyment. After Mr Gardiner makes his closing remarks to the jury, "I leave the reputation of Lawrence and Penguin Books in your hands," and Mr Griffith-Jones, who has not called any witnesses, preferring instead to rely upon the jury's appreciation of what constitutes "proper thought and conduct" to prevent opening the floodgates of filth, the judge sums up the evidence, applying his own bias.

In the jury room an older woman responds to a man's abrupt verdict of guilty: "It hasn't done any of us any harm, has it?" Helena answers: "I've been affected by it … really good sex smashes up your life."

Four decades later, Helena (Claire Bloom) and Keith (Kenneth Cranham) appear separately on camera for interviews about their week as jurors in the famous obscenity trial.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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