While researching the work of author D.H. Lawrence (Kenneth Branagh) Kate (Alison Steadman) begins a romance with a fellow academic and learns about Lawrence's love affair with the married aristocrat Frieda Von Richthofen (Helen Mirren) in this made-for-television drama. As Lawrence and Von Richthofen fall deeper into their forbidden relationship Kate grows more familiar with Lawrence's work such as the sensuous Lady Chatterly's Lover.