AllMovie

Screened on U.S. television in 2001 as a presentation of Masterpiece Theatre, Take a Girl Like You is a two-part adaptation of English novelist Kingsley Amis' 1959 novel of the same name. The titular "girl" is Jenny Bunn (Sienna Guillory), a beautiful and virginal young woman who has the exhausting habit of inspiring lust in every man (and certain women) whose path she happens to cross. Hailing from England's industrial north, 20-year-old Jenny moves away from home to take a teaching job in a small town just outside of London. After arriving at her lodgings, a room in the house of the acrimoniously married Dick and Martha Thompson (Robert Daws and Emma Chambers), Jenny makes the acquaintance of Patrick Standish (Rupert Graves), the town's resident lothario. Patrick, a Latin teacher at the town's posh public school, becomes immediately obsessed with Jenny and wastes no time in forming a strategy to get her in the sack. Although Jenny is attracted to Patrick, she is also intent on saving herself for marriage. Additionally, she finds herself dealing with the amorous advances of Graham (Ian Driver), Patrick's socially inept Scottish flatmate; Julian Ormerod (Hugh Bonneville), a local millionaire and friend of Patrick's; and Dick, her dodgy landlord. By the end of episode one, Jenny and Patrick are officially dating, but Patrick, who is frustrated by Jenny's steadfast refusal to put out, continues to pursue a sleazy pastime as an unrepentant womanizer.