Not long after The Inheritance was auctioned in 1996 to Dutton Books, film and television rights were acquired by Cosgrove-Meurer Productions. In April 1997 the novel aired on CBS as a Kraft Premier Movie. The script preserves the basic plot lines of Edith's struggle with class differences, the deep family secret and romance, as well as the backdrop of nineteenth-century manners and morals.

The setting, however, is changed from England in the early nineteenth century to Massachusetts in the 1870s. The titles of nobility are removed. Changed, too, is the Hamilton household. No longer is there a widowed Lady Hamilton but a tremulous wife named Beatrice. Henry Hamilton, her husband, is a strong Victorian figure with some advanced views of how women ought to behave. He takes an avuncular interest in the welfare of Edith, the orphan the couple have taken in to be daughter Amy's companion.

Lord Walter Percy's...