WHAT WOULD MRS. DANVERS SAY?
BBC2 just started production on Daphne, a new 90-minute drama about a tumultuous period in the life of famous British author Daphne du Maurier, who wrote Rebecca and The Birds. The film is based on Margaret Forster's 1993 authorized biography, and charts the married Du Maurier's love for Ellen Doubleday (the wife of the American publishing tycoon), and later, the actress Gertrude Lawrence.

The movie boasts a great cast, including Geraldine Somerville (Gosford Park, the Harry Potter movies) as Du Maurier and Elizabeth McGovern (Once Upon a Time in America) and Janet McTeer (Songcatcher) as Ellen and Gertrude, respectively. But if you're expecting another Tipping the Velvet, you'll be disappointed. The lesbian love scenes will be "more reminiscent of Noel Coward's Brief Encounter than Sarah Waters's more graphic Fingersmith." In American terms, that means more like South of Nowhere than The L Word when it comes to physical affection.

And while I don't want to spoil the plot (those who want to be spoiled should read here), there's not exactly a happy lesbian ending. But then, heartache is the universal language of lesbians, right?

NO, IT'S NOT ABOUT A PACK OF LESBIANS. DAMNIT.
There's another potential fall series with a series regular lesbian character in it: Traveling in Packs, a half-hour comedy for ABC about three women in their thirties who live together. The lesbian character, Mary, is a therapist, and her own therapist happens to be her old college boyfriend, whom she says she never enjoyed sleeping with except "maybe that one time after we saw Being John Malkovich and I started thinking about Catherine Keener."

If I had a nickel for every woman who's said that to a man...