In September 1781, Lady Seymour Worsley travelled to Maidstone to take a bath. Little did she know at the time that this intimate scene would be recounted in graphic detail five months later to a courtroom packed with stern-faced gentlemen, gleeful reporters, and gossip-hungry members of the public. Or indeed, that the episode would be recreated for an audience of over 2.5 million more than two centuries later.

Based on historian Hallie Rubenhold’s book Lady Worsley’s Whim, BBC drama The Scandalous Lady W turns the spotlight back onto one of the eighteenth century’s most notorious women, and –  as one newspaper of the time put it – ‘her repeated swervings from the vulgar path of Hymen’. With Natalie Dormer in the eponymous role, it stood set to bear all the hallmarks of standard historical bodice-ripping fare. But interestingly, the romance – and even the sex – simply add colour to an exploration of the rules and realities of marriage in the eighteenth century.

Packing the story of Seymour and Sir Richard Worsley’s six-year relationship (and its spectacularly awkward collapse) into 90 minutes, the action revolves around the court case which revealed the couple’s unconventional sexual exploits to the world.  We, like our eighteenth-century counterparts, are fed details of the increasingly salacious activities of the Worsley bedchamber, where Seymour found that being the dutiful wife would in her case also involve a string of other gentlemen – for her husband’s pleasure if not always her own. With the arrangement complicated as one of the romps eventually turned to romance, all parties courted disgrace – but Sir Richard didn’t count on the fact that his errant wife was quite so willing to kiss goodbye to her reputation in order to get what she wanted. While the generous dose of time-hopping can be slightly disorientating at times, it serves to underline Seymour’s progress from hopeful young heiress to increasingly resentful and willfully scandalized public figure.

The frenzied interest in this very public airing of very dirty laundry produced gloriously rich source material from which the story could be reconstructed – and happily, the script doesn’t stray too far from Rubenhold’s excellent original work. Inevitably, creative license was taken with some of the finer plot points, no doubt to create a more palatable evening drama: Seymour, prohibited from attending the trial, was here placed in the midst of the legal action, and also credited with writing some of the defamatory verses that appeared, to her husband’s dismay, in its messy wake. In Hallie Rubenhold’s book, she is said to have declared that ‘although the production is not mine, the sentiments it contains flow from my very soul.’ The decision to brush over the death of the lovers’ infant child in Sir Richard’s care two weeks before the trial was also understandable – the grief and suspicions it raised would have cast a sinister cloud over the potentially inspiring central theme of female empowerment, and added an unfortunate edge of heartlessness to Seymour’s closing smirk.

Countering these twists on the original story were a delightful glimpse at the eighteenth-century world, in the direct quotation of historical material (the popular verses), some immodest but historically authentic language (yes, ‘screw’, ‘fuck’, and ‘bitch’ were in contemporary usage), and of course in the beautiful costumes and sets. It is also refreshing that the main focus remains squarely on Seymour’s courageous efforts to live life on her own terms, rather than presenting us with the conventional period romance in which the ‘falling in love’ takes centre-stage. Very little time is devoted to the blossoming attachment between Seymour and George Bisset, and even less to the moments they share away from the lascivious gaze of her husband. The overall emotional impact of later events could certainly have been increased if we had spent a little more time with the characters in these earlier stages, but for me this owed only to the time restrictions of the 90 minutes allowed. Note to the BBC: just a little more breathing space could have given both more power to the love affair and added complexity to some of the secondary characters.

The drama is strong, however, in its representations of the well-heeled woman’s place in eighteenth-century society, and the fragility of the female reputation. Even as a lady of ‘quality’ Seymour was, as we see, at the mercy of gossiping servants. Her assessment in terms of financial worth – first through her impressive dowry and later in the damages her husband demanded – is constant, and the concept of a wife as ‘property’ is repeatedly railed against by our frustrated heroine (if ‘heroine’ is quite the right word). In the course of the trial we are also presented with the glaring sexual double standard through which men were quite able to cultivate and confess to an extra-marital career without fear of too much public censure, while a woman risked complete ruin –  including not only the loss of her reputation and fortune, but also access to her children. Though we still haven’t quite reached the point where the sexes can call themselves entirely equal on this point, there really is no way of underestimating the courage it must have taken for Seymour to essentially declare herself to be a whore for the sake of liberating herself from her husband.

This is not a comfortable Austenian fiction in which boy meets girl, misunderstandings ensue, domestic drama unfolds, and conflicts are neatly resolved by marriage. It is not about unyielding devotion or the eternity of true love, but is at its heart simply the determined struggle of a woman against her own unhappy circumstances – she was just willing to go much further even than many women would today. (It is also worth reflecting, if you dare, on just how humiliating the predicament was for Sir Richard by considering how the same accusations against a prominent politician might be received in modern times.)

This is, overall, an entertaining and visually appealing portrayal of one remarkable woman’s refusal to submit quietly to the misfortune of living ‘in an age of men.’

The Scandalous Lady W aired on BBC Two on 17 August 2015. It is now available to purchase on DVD.