Jane Austen it definitely isn’t

A lesbian love story, a grisly double murder and more than a hint of racism and snobbery in 19th Century high society...

Lady’s maid Frances Langton is discovered in the bed of her mistress, Marguerite Benham, with the bloodied body of Marguerite beside her. Elsewhere in the grand London house, Frances’s master, respected scientist George Benham, lies dead, having been repeatedly stabbed. Frances claims to be bewildered. She insists she didn’t murder the couple but she has no idea who did. She had taken laudanum – a highly addictive opium preparation used as a painkiller – and can’t recall what happened.

However, the evidence, such as it is, points to her. She had had an ‘unnatural attachment’ to Marguerite and they had quarrelled very publicly at a soiree the night before. Witnesses are queuing up to say she had threatened to kill the Benhams. A resentful Jamaican servant with a motive and a drug habit? You don’t fancy her chances in court. It’s an open-and-shut case. Even her own lawyer urges her to confess. But did she do it?

Based on the award-winning novel of the same name by Sara Collins, who also adapted it for the screen, this four-parter, being shown over consecutive nights, is an unusual period drama combining a lesbian love story with a whodunnit and told from the perspective of a young black woman in early 19th Century London.

As imprisoned Frances awaits trial, we learn about her childhood. She had been born into slavery and raised on a Jamaican plantation – ironically named Paradise – by its white owners as a sort of experiment in the power of education. We also follow the course of her arrival in London and at the Benhams’ house, as well as her relationship with her French mistress as they become closer and closer and, eventually, lovers. This is a lot racier than Jane Austen.

The performances are excellent. Relative newcomer Karla-Simone Spence, above right, excels as Frances and surely has a great career ahead of her. Sophie Cookson, above left, is terrific as moody Marguerite Benham, the unconventional lady of the house, a frustrated writer married to a man she doesn’t love and feeling herself as much of an outsider as Frances.

Pooky Quesnel is compelling as the Benhams’ watchful, hard-faced housekeeper Mrs Linux, who has it in for Frances.

Stephen Campbell Moore plays George Benham, and Steven Mackintosh is Frances’s former slave master, John Langton.

There are shocks and twists along the way, and viewers are kept guessing as to whether this beautiful, well-educated, articulate person really is capable of the murders of a woman she loved and a man she hated.