A lawyer travels to a small seaside town to settle the estate of a recently deceased woman, but soon becomes ensnared in something much more sinister.

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.

Eleven one-act sex comedies, involving wife swappers, a bored housewife, a young virgin, and an orgy in Kilburn.