It's disturbing how many TV dramas are using rape just to titillate: LIBBY PURVES on seeing sexual assault in Apple Tree Yard, EastEnders... and even Downton Abbey 

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How many times, I wonder, have you seen rape depicted on television? The rivetingly grim BBC1 thriller Apple Tree Yard, which finished on Monday, pivoted on a terrifying, though discreetly shot, attack on Emily Watson’s character Yvonne.

But there have been so many other screen rapes — some explicit, some just hinted at — in Happy Valley, Game Of Thrones, Mad Men, The Fall, Peaky Blinders, Call The Midwife, even Downton Abbey.

The new series of seaside crime drama Broadchurch, returning this month, will focus on a rape, we’re told.

The rivetingly grim BBC1 thriller Apple Tree Yard, which finished on Monday, pivoted on a terrifying, though discreetly shot, attack on Emily Watson’s character Yvonne

Soaps, too, use it as a plot device. Victims include Queen Vic landlady Linda Carter in EastEnders and lingerie firm boss Carla Connor in Coronation Street.

Even the radio gets in on the act: in The Archers, we had the sound of Helen’s protests as her husband, evil Rob, plied her with drink and forced her into unprotected sex when she didn’t want another baby.

Is there too much of it? Is it always justified, as programme makers will claim, to remind us that violence against women happens (it is overwhelmingly women in these scenes)?

Or are writers going for a rape scene as an easy, dramatic way to create a crisis and a motive for the next episode?

Worse, is the attraction simply the titillation of sex mixed with violence, generally against an attractive female?

How many times, I wonder, have you seen rape depicted on television? Soaps, too, use it as a plot device. Victims include Queen Vic landlady Linda Carter in EastEnders

And, even more distressing, is it because the sight of a pretty woman, sobbing after an attack with her clothes askew, delivers a darker satisfaction?

There are some men who resent females and enjoy being reminded that even a strong woman can be overpowered by an average man. Their horribly Neanderthal attitude is: ‘They may be taking our jobs and doing better in exams, but get ’em up a dark alley . . .’

So is it necessary or is it overdone — particularly when so much TV drama today is written by women, as is the case with Apple Tree Yard, which is based on a novel by Louise Doughty?

First, it is vital to state that rape is wicked and terrible: an invasion of a person’s body, a denial of their human dignity and very identity.

Never mind how drunk both parties are, how confused their interaction, how strong a previous or marital relationship. Rape is rape, a crime second only to murder.

Equally, it is vital to stress how seriously wrong it is for a woman to falsely accuse someone of rape out of vindictiveness or regret that she may have consented to sex.

As a society we have learned to take the crime of rape with proper seriousness. But in entertainment shows, the dependence on it as a dramatic crux is disturbing.

Sally Wainwright, writer of the excellent crime drama Happy Valley, has argued it is important to have such plots. The main storyline in the West Yorkshire-based series involved a woman police sergeant whose daughter was raped and then took her own life after giving birth.

Ms Wainwright said feminists who complained that violence against women should never be shown were wrong, explaining: ‘The counter-argument is that you have to show the reality, otherwise you’re complicit in pretending that violence towards women doesn’t happen.’

The creators of the medieval fantasy Game Of Thrones piously point out rape and sexual violence have always happened in wars, so because their story is about war and power, not to include it would be unrealistic.

Certainly, some treatments of rape onscreen have been much more sensitive than others.

In Apple Tree Yard, the prevailing impression of the rape scene — with sudden blackouts, jerky shots of the attacker’s face and his fiftysomething professional woman victim’s terror — is of utterly unsexy, terrifying violence.

The programme makers put a great deal of sensitive research into getting it right and keeping any titillation out of it.

And the aftermath in the subsequent episode is truthful in its sensitivity, not least because the victim, Yvonne (a well-respected scientist), fails to report the attack to the police. She hesitates outside the police station with her sack of clothing — vital forensic evidence — before dumping it in a skip.

This is important because one of the problems of real rape cases is the reluctance of some women to report it. Smart and intelligent as Yvonne is, her hesitation reflects many of the reasons why women sometimes don’t.

She had a few drinks and knew the man as a work friend, so she fears that any defence barrister would play on that. Even more of a problem is that she is in a secret adulterous affair and had sex with her lover earlier that night.

In real life, young women who are raped often fear that their one-night stands and general reputation will be trashed in a courtroom full of strangers.

On Mad Men, Office manager Joan (Christina Hendricks) was bullied and bribed by her bosses into having sex with a client

Also, Yvonne’s daughter is heavily pregnant and her son very fragile with bipolar disorder. The effect of a court case could be harsh on them and her husband. Her dilemma, therefore, affords an accomplished and useful drama.

But that is not always the case in TV rape plots on TV. Many are the result of a producer wanting an easy plot device and to titillate viewers by featuring beautiful young women. (Note, though, that in real life, plain and elderly women get raped, too.)

Rape stories create shocked interest, move the plot on and enable actresses to display close-up misery and humiliation without going too deeply into their full, diverse characters as human beings with complex feelings.

So using rape in a story is, in some cases, downright lazy.

You see this in new writing for the stage, too. Many times in fringe theatres I have sat glumly waiting for the inevitable moment a woman is flung to the ground with a male colleague on top of her, to keep a plodding script moving.

Even long-established playwrights fall for the easy way out. A play by Edward Bond depicts a mother killing her twin babies, whereupon her husband’s reaction is to rape her violently (an unusual decision, one would think). When she wriggles away, he continues to sexually attack the sofa!

And there have been moments, in grander theatres, which made me mutter, inwardly, the same response. Not a cry of outrage, but of ‘lazy!’ and ‘disrespectful!’.

Unfortunately, rape is not the only lazy way out for uninventive writers who don’t get the simple fact that women, like men, go through complicated and nuanced problems in their lives.

In 2013 lady’s maid Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt) was raped in the boot room. Writer Julian Fellowes said sexual assaults were a danger for servants

I’ve lost count of the number of times a show, on film, TV or stage, has relied on explaining a woman’s difficulties or sorrows by one of three elements from her past life: she’s been raped, had an abortion or been cheated on.

And that’s all. You’d think those were the only ways to upset a woman.

Apart from detective series with fraught female officers, you won’t very often see a heroine having a conflict entirely unrelated to sexual relationships — for example, a work crisis, an ethical dilemma or a difficult friendship.

And so it was a breath of fresh air to see Nicole Kidman — so often chucked around on screen by male co-stars — in the play Photograph 51, playing a tensely focused, dedicated biophysicist whose work led to the discovery of the DNA double helix, yet who is less feted than her male colleagues.

At no point did the author feel it necessary to put it all down to her having been the victim of a sexual attack. For which relief, much thanks!