A secret love life? I should cocoa

Pardon me, my sweets, for addressing you in the cut-glass tones of a minor royal ("Hello! It's so nice to see you here. Would you like a cup of cocoa? I do hope you're not going to be a boring little person from the lower orders"). Thing is, I've simply been unable to resist affecting this preposterous form of enunciation since watching Daphne.

The Daphne in question was romantic novelist Daphne du Maurier, the author of Rebecca. Written by Amy Jenkins, creator of the fabulously over-rated This Life, Daphne, it celebrated the centenary of its subject's birth by focusing on a torrid episode from her not-so-secret love life.

In charting the story of Daphne's unrequited, self-thwarting sapphic pash for the beautiful and glamorous American publishing heiress Ellen Doubleday, Daphne utilised personal letters and biographies - and, golly, didn't it show. Jenkins failed to transmute her sources from page to TV stage. All too often, she failed to give us involving dialogue. Instead, we heard studied and lifeless reflections from an impossibly privileged social era, delivered in deadly upper-crust tones.

Back in the immediate post-war years, any well-connected gel who, like Daphne, viewed herself as "a boy in a box", could go orf and write a London West End play to exorcise her angst about such forbidden beastliness.

The production of this play - September Tide, dears - embroiled its author in an equally-forbidden-yet-fully-requited amour with one of the drama's cast-members, in this case Gertrude Lawrence, a free-and-easy older actress. In an unusual instance of sexual serendipity, Gertrude had years previously been the mistress of Daphne's father, a renowned actor-manager.

Gosh, that's the sort of in-bred theatrical raciness that an in-bred racy theatrical of the era - Noel Coward, say - could deliver a withering bon mot or two about hang on, who's that over there? Egad, it's Noel Coward!

Noel didn't comment quotably on Daphne du Maurier's lesbian leanings - save for twigging that September Tide all-too-thinly disguised Daphne's unspeakable lusts for Ellen, despite the author having transposed the gender of one of its leading women.

But we did hear Noel's brittle aphorism about Hollywood ("not keen on the place ... I'd rather have a nice cup of ceau-ceau").

Quipping from the grave, Daphne's dad had the show's best line; his summary of Gertrude Lawrence, an example of "a certain type of woman (who) is best enjoyed on a divan rather than a double bed".

Daphne was best enjoyed as a fashion spectacle. The most genuinely gripping thing about it was the wardrobe deployed by Daphne's star, Geraldine Somerville. You couldn't help but admire the manly tweed Oxford bags, wool swagger coats and Fair Isle jumpers that Geraldine strode around in.

In the final analysis, maybe there were problems with Daphne du Maurier's own memoires. How honest an observer of herself was she between 1947 and 1952?

Despite much evidence to the contrary, she couldn't tell herself she was homosexual, instead coyly allowing she had "Venetian tendencies ... du Maurier code for the L word."

New comedy-drama Gavin and Stacey was a more honest bid to chart human relationships, although it seemed uncertain whether to be Trainspotting (uncomfortably hip) or Cold Feet (cosy and reassuring).

Just like the former, Gavin and Stacey had knowing drug references and an OAP issuing incredibly frank advice on sexual etiquette.

It also had good-hearted characters rendered more likeable via their fallibility. As yet, however, it's not truly funny.