What could have brought Dr. Yvonne Carmichael, a law-abiding wife and mother, an eminent scientist, into a dock at the Old Bailey about to be exposed in a highly damaging and compromising lie?

Emily Watson (A Song For Jenny, The Theory Of Everything) leads a stellar line up in Bafta-winning Amanda Coe’s adaptation of Louise Doughty’s best-selling novel Apple Tree Yard for BBC One.

Produced by the award-winning Kudos, Apple Tree Yard is a provocative, audacious thriller that puts women’s lives at the heart of a gripping, insightful story about the values we live by and the choices that we make. A ‘what if’ situation that could happen to any one of us.

Dr. Yvonne Carmichael has a high flying career, a beautiful suburban home and the perfect family. Smart, successful and highly renowned within her field of genetics, Yvonne has a conventional and apparently contented life, married to husband Gary, complete with two grown up children.

After confidently presenting to a Commons Select Committee on her specialist subject, she is approached by a charismatic and mysterious stranger, who seems refreshingly interested in what she has to say – refreshingly interested in her. Suddenly, she finds herself alone and intimate with him in the deserted crypt beneath the House of Commons. It’s a completely out of character moment of madness. Despite Yvonne’s expectations that she will never see Mark Costley again, their encounter builds to a passionate and all-consuming affair.

However, despite Yvonne’s careful plans to keep her career and home life separate, fantasy and reality soon start to overlap; finally everything she values is put at risk when a life-changing act of violence ultimately leads to a Crown Court trial…

Joined by Ben Chaplin (Cinderella, Mad Dogs) and Mark Bonnar (Catastrophe, Line Of Duty), the line-up also includes Adeel Akhtar (Capital, Murdered by My Father), Lydia Leonard (Life In Squares, River), Frances Tomelty (Unforgotten), Susan Lynch (Happy Valley) and Rhashan Stone (Strike Back).

Directed by Jessica Hobbs (Broadchurch, River, The Slap), Apple Tree Yard is produced by Chris Carey (River, Run, Dirk Gently). Executive producers are Manda Levin (The Tunnel, River) and Amanda Coe for Kudos, and Lucy Richer for the BBC.