Bouquet of Barbed Wire
ITV1

In the library at my school in Sheffield, the selection of adult books was limited but surprising: if you looked, you could find all sorts of racy stuff. The only possible explanation I've ever been able to come up with for this is that the teachers simply assumed such volumes would never be read.
Well, I read them. Desperately seeking information about Adult World, I gorged myself silly in my lunch hour (and sometimes during particularly boring lessons) on the novels of Edna O'Brien, Margaret Drabble and, naughtiest of all, Andrea Newman.

In my mind's eye, I can still see the battered 1976 TV tie-in cover of Bouquet of Barbed Wire ("Now a powerful drama from London Weekend Television"). Susan Penhaligon, who played Prue, was in turquoise, staring into the middle distance. Frank Finlay, as her father, Peter, had luxuriant sideburns and was whispering in her ear. Believe me, for a 13-year-old girl, this jacket was more thrilling than I can possibly describe here without making both of us blush.

I guess it was only a matter of time before someone remade Bouquet "for a new generation" (6 September, 9pm). Ordinarily, I fear these remakes. Why not write something new? In the case of Bouquet, though, I was hot with excitement. Would its tangled tale of sexual obsession still seem shocking? Would it still grip like a vice? And who would step into the shoes of Penhaligon and Finlay?

I'll take these in reverse order. Prue is played by Imogen Poots and Peter is played by Trevor Eve. Poots is a more convincing actor than Penhaligon, bringing to the role both innocence and spoiled sophistication (although, boringly, her character is not half as manipulative as the 1976 Prue, who was a minx).

Eve, meanwhile, is delicious as Peter: creepy and creeping. I particularly liked the moment when his jaw went slack with desire - acute but very ageing - shortly before he molested his pert new colleague over her drawing board (this time round, he is an architect, publishers being well on their way to extinction).

Am I gripped? Oh, yes, even though I know - or I think I know - exactly what's going to happen. (I'm sure I won't be spoiling anything for the new generation if I paraphrase Clive James and reveal that, by the time this thing is over, pretty much everyone will have gone to bed with everyone else.)
As to whether this Bouquet is shocking, I am not sure. Last time, it was the unspoken incestuous desire of Peter for Prue that was transgressive - and the dubious conviction of Cassie, his wife (Hermione Norris in the new adap­tation), that some women like getting duffed up by their men.
Incest and domestic violence are still horrible but, by now, we're far more used to seeing them in films and on television. In any case, I would bewilling to bet that Cassie will not be making a similar statement in Guy Andrews's adaptation.

Nevertheless, I found the first part unexpectedly unsettling. Why? The thought occurs to me that it was simply guilt that made me feel anxious. It is just so unusual these days to see a television drama about the rich, well-spoken, metropolitan middle classes. We're not supposed to care about such people any more, let alone to find their crises - our darling daughter would rather have a baby by her lover than go to university! - dramatic or involving. Watching these characters act them out feels more illicit than watching porn.

It's no wonder that Andrews has felt it necessary to throw class war into the mix. In the original series, Prue's lover, Gavin, was American. Now, he's a working-class Yorkshireman with a council flat in Hackney, his presence in the family stoking not only Peter's obsessive sexual jealousy, but his fear and self-loathing, too. (Gavin is Other but he is also, for Peter, a reminder of a world left long behind.)

It's also going to make his imminent attraction for Cassie - assuming that Andrews leaves this plot twist intact - rather more Mellors-like than if he was just some Updike-reading PhD. Suffice to say, I'm finding the whole schlocky show pleasingly spicy. You could almost say I feel 13 again. Call me trashy, but if this is ITV coming slowly back to life, I'm all for it.