Coming Soon: Affinity

As part of the ITV winter-spring season they’ll be showing a one-off spooky drama called Affinity. The story is set against the backdrop of a Victorian prison and centres around Selina Dawes (Zoe Tapper), a spiritualist imprisoned for assaulting a young girl during a seance. Selina claims to have been possessed by a malevolent spirit at the time.

The film is based on the novel by Sarah Waters, probably best known for Tipping the Velvet. According to Waters:

It was definitely inspired by the traditional Victorian ghost stories of authors like Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, which are often about people, especially woman, trapped in houses and institutions, not quite knowing how to get out while their repressed passions produce odd effects around them.

Affinity was adapted for TV by writer Andrew Davies who previously adapted Tipping…. Davies says:

Affinity is a ghost story, a love story and a mystery. It’s about a prison visitor in the 19th Century who falls in love with a young female prisoner who is in there for being a ‘fraudulent medium’.

I think it is an extraordinary mixture, and the spiritualism side of the story is fascinating. Selina has the power of communicating with the spirit world and has a spirit guide called Peter Quick. A huge part of the story is whether we are we convinced that she is a genuine medium and can genuinely overcome physical barriers.

It’s a very unusual sort of period drama – it’s very different from your typical TV drama.

No exact broadcast date available yet, however the DVD’s due out in the UK at the end of January 2009.