Take a Girl Like You

Take a Girl Like You, Kingsley Amis's brilliant comic novel on the art of seduction comes to Masterpiece Theatre in a wistfully faithful portrayal of late 1950s-era England.

Award-winning screenwriter Andrew Davies adapted the story for the screen. Rupert Graves stars as Patrick Standish, a lothario on the loose in a country town near London.

Newcomer Sienna Guillory plays Jenny Bunn, a stunningly beautiful, virginal schoolteacher newly relocated from the North.

When Patrick spots Jenny, it is lust at first sight, and he immediately vows to seduce her at all costs.

She just as devoutly resolves to resist.

"Will he seduce and abandon her?" wonders screenwriter Davies, or "Will she get the wedding ring that she's after?"

Davies brings personal experience of 50s-era courtship to the project, along with his long string of celebrated adaptations for Masterpiece Theatre.

"Take a Girl Like You is about sex and love and in particular sexual manners, just before the swinging 60s," he says.

"It was a very personal book to Kingsley Amis and the deep and moving theme beneath the hilarious comedy is the difference between lust and love."