Starring Romola Garai as Sugar and Chris O'Dowd as William Rackham, the drama aired in the UK during April 2011 on BBC Two.
In Victorian London, William Rackham is the heir to a perfume business and has a mentally ill wife, Agnes, who is confined to her home.
William meets and becomes infatuated with a young and intelligent prostitute named Sugar, who is writing a novel of her own, filled with hatred and revenge against all the men who abused her and her colleagues.
William moves Sugar into a flat of her own on the condition that she sees him exclusively, while she helps him emotionally and financially by giving good advice on how to handle the company.
Agnes becomes increasingly unstable and desperate and, having caught glimpses of Sugar, believes her to be her own guardian angel who will bring her to the imaginary Convent of Health.
"[5] Writing for The Observer, Andrew Anthony was enthusiastic about the drama, calling the acting "richly subtle" and the cinematography "intoxicatingly woozy".
[6] The Guardian's Sarah Dempster described the atmosphere as "woozy, gauzy [and] brilliantly claustrophobic"; a result, she said, of Munden's "exceptional, stylish, unselfconscious direction" and de Veer's score.
He was pleased with the result and credited screenwriter Lucinda Coxon for placing "parental nurture or the lack of it" at the centre of the story.