Historical Drama Review: “The Scandalous Lady W”

Like the Tudors before them, the Georgians really were an interesting bunch of people. They drank hot chocolate in the morning, they wore skirts so wide you wondered how they squeezed through the door and didn’t manage to lose someone short underneath them, they lost America and they had a mad King. “The Scandalous Lady W” focusses on yet another aspect of Georgian eccentricity – Lady Worsley, who is played fantastically by Natalie Dormer. Dormer, who previously played Queen Anne Boleyn who allegedly had affairs with five men, was definitely in her element here, playing the Lady Worsley who had affairs with twenty-seven men.

What began as a fairy tale marriage between a young heiress and an aspiring politician slowly fragments into this bizarre set-up where he actively encourages his wife to sleep with other men while he watches through a key-hole. It goes without saying, that she’s not too keen on his hobby, but she obliges anyway as an obedient wife. This is in a time when a wife was seen to be like property to her husband, like a cow. She does not really have a choice in this.

Unfortunately for her husband though, this pastime comes back to bite him on the bottom when Lady Worsley falls in love with her 27th (or 28th?) conquest – George Bisset (who is played by fellow time traveller, Aneurin Barnard). Lady W and Bisset then decide to defy convention, dream of (shock! Horror!) a normal set-up where they can live a normal life together bringing up baby Jane (whom I assume belonged to Bisset. To be honest, I wasn’t sure out of the 28 conquests who was little Jane’s father) and they elope.

Mr. Lady W is not happy, stomps around his big house, stomps a bit more around other people’s houses and then, takes Bisset to court for damages to his property, i.e. his wife. It’s hard to sympathise with Mr.Lady W considering he encouraged this in the first place. However, to his humiliation, the Worsleys’ massive bundle of dirty laundry is hung up high for all to see. Dormer when interviewed about the making of the drama said that this was the beginning of the tabloid press as we know them today. This was probably when they had that epiphany moment, realising that dirty laundry could help you sell more newspapers than Georgian Pudding recipes.

The costumes and palaces are beautiful - I think I even recognised Ham House and its symmetrical gardens as one of the many impressive settings – and there are definitely echoes of “The Duchess” in this. The only criticism I would have of this is that it seemed like they were trying to compress the whole story into ninety minutes. There was a lot of jumping between the courtroom in the 1780s and flashbacks in the 1770s. It probably would have done the story more justice to turn it into a slow burner and extend the drama into a two or three-part series. However, that aside, it certainly was a view through the key-hole into one of the most scandalous divorce cases in history. Five stars!

To find out more about the real story of Lady Worsley, the book that the drama is based on is available now here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Scandalous-Lady-Hallie-Rubenhold/dp/1784701939/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

Also, here is another article from English Heritage that gives some more background about Lady Worsley’s story:

http://blog.english-heritage.org.uk/lady-worsley/

Image – Lady Worsley, played by Natalie Dormer.