More sex please: TV viewers lament tepid Lady Chatterley's Lover

By Sam Creighton

Daily Mail·

8 Sep, 2015 05:00 AM2 mins to read

A scene from the 2015 BBC remake of Lady Chatterley's Lover.

With a shirtless Richard Madden and a breathless Holliday Grainger playing the leads, the latest adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover was expected to leave the nation hot under the collar.

But when viewers tuned in to the tepid offering from the BBC, the only longing they felt was for Sean Bean and Joely Richardson's risqué 1993 original.

While the earlier effort is famous for its coarse language, graphic sex scenes and full-frontal nudity, the newer version toned down the raunchiness - much to the disappointment of fans.

A scene from the TV show Lady Chatterley's Lover.

And although rising star Madden, 29, who played Prince Charming in the recent Cinderella film, impressed viewers with his topless scenes, he was seen as a mere pretender to Bean's gruff groundskeeper Mellors, a role that made the actor a rough and ready heartthrob. One viewer wrote on Twitter: "Underwhelmed by BBC1's Lady Chatterley's Lover. D H Lawrence must have been turning. Preferred Sean Bean's Mellors", while another added: "I watched Lady Chatterley's Lover and all I can say is?...? bring back Sean Bean!"

The novel was banned for decades because of its graphic scenes, but Jed Mercurio, who wrote the latest adaptation, said it was a deliberate decision to move in a different direction. He added: "It doesn't excite me as a writer to write some swearing or sex scenes because they don't have any emotional content. What makes an audience watch something and care about the characters is the emotional life of the characters".

Richard Madden in a scene from Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Madden, who coincidentally played Bean's son in hit TV show Game of Thrones, said he would have turned down the part if it had been 'raunchy and crude'.

The one-off programme fits into a trend of racy BBC period dramas, following Poldark and Life in Squares, with the upcoming The Go-Between also aiming to leave fans breathless. Lady Chatterley's Lover attracted 4.9million viewers, a million fewer than the number who often tuned in to Poldark.