This six-part ITV drama started as if it was going to be a searing examination of domestic abuse, then morphed into a strange Harlan Coben-esque it's-all-in-my-head, reversal-of-fortune mystery before settling down to a seen-it-before revenge thriller where we learn in the final episode that the plot was based on a Patricia Highsmith / Alfred Hitchcock Hollywood collaboration from almost 70 years ago.
Thematically, I found these plot shifts just too contrived and incredible to digest but in the end, rolled with the flow just to see how it all panned out in the end and if just desserts were duly served.
Joanne Froggat is the put-upon wife and mother of two young sons who puts up with her high-flying husband's controlling ways and violent mood-swings which regularly see him turn to lifting his hands to her. With seemingly no-one to turn to about her plight - she and her dying mum don't talk and she fell out with her best girl-friend years before - she worries that he will take her kids away from her in any post-divorce custodial battle, but soldiers on in her situation while really living no kind of life at all, treading eggshells about what kind of mood he arrive home in.
Then a mysterious young black man randomly starts talking to her outside a bar in one of her rare nights-out away from hubby and reveals that he's a private detective in the employ of her husband. He then spins to her a fantastical-sounding plot of the husband's to murder her, just like he apparently did with a young girl at his office with whom he's alleged to have had an affair and that she has to get her retaliation in first to stop him. But the plan she and the apparently conscience-stricken P. I. hatch goes awry and it's she who ends up fearing for her own mental health, consigned to a psychiatric-help facility, allowing her husband a clear field to sweep up the kids, with her seemingly safely out of the picture. But as she recovers her stability of mind, she revisits the events which led up to her current plight, gradually piecing together the truth and naturally decides to do something about it.
I suppose it was too much to hope that the show would continue with the domestic violence angle and I almost gave up on it when Froggat's revenge plan was shown to be based on something as flimsy as a cheap paperback crime novel, which she's somehow imagined as real. It just about righted itself again as she bravely sorts out out her life and hatches her own plan to turn the tables, although it was underwhelming to learn of the unoriginal "Strangers On A Train" inspiration behind the husband's plan.
It was all a bit ramshackle at times but with good acting by a dressed-down Froggat, Michiel Huisman as the evil husband and Samuel Adewunmi as his accomplice, it was a pity it fell into clichéd, incredulous sensationalism when it could have been a much darker and more realistic portrayal of the very real societal problem of domestic abuse, obviously exacerbated by the recent isolation imposed on families by the Covid situation.
A missed opportunity.
Thematically, I found these plot shifts just too contrived and incredible to digest but in the end, rolled with the flow just to see how it all panned out in the end and if just desserts were duly served.
Joanne Froggat is the put-upon wife and mother of two young sons who puts up with her high-flying husband's controlling ways and violent mood-swings which regularly see him turn to lifting his hands to her. With seemingly no-one to turn to about her plight - she and her dying mum don't talk and she fell out with her best girl-friend years before - she worries that he will take her kids away from her in any post-divorce custodial battle, but soldiers on in her situation while really living no kind of life at all, treading eggshells about what kind of mood he arrive home in.
Then a mysterious young black man randomly starts talking to her outside a bar in one of her rare nights-out away from hubby and reveals that he's a private detective in the employ of her husband. He then spins to her a fantastical-sounding plot of the husband's to murder her, just like he apparently did with a young girl at his office with whom he's alleged to have had an affair and that she has to get her retaliation in first to stop him. But the plan she and the apparently conscience-stricken P. I. hatch goes awry and it's she who ends up fearing for her own mental health, consigned to a psychiatric-help facility, allowing her husband a clear field to sweep up the kids, with her seemingly safely out of the picture. But as she recovers her stability of mind, she revisits the events which led up to her current plight, gradually piecing together the truth and naturally decides to do something about it.
I suppose it was too much to hope that the show would continue with the domestic violence angle and I almost gave up on it when Froggat's revenge plan was shown to be based on something as flimsy as a cheap paperback crime novel, which she's somehow imagined as real. It just about righted itself again as she bravely sorts out out her life and hatches her own plan to turn the tables, although it was underwhelming to learn of the unoriginal "Strangers On A Train" inspiration behind the husband's plan.
It was all a bit ramshackle at times but with good acting by a dressed-down Froggat, Michiel Huisman as the evil husband and Samuel Adewunmi as his accomplice, it was a pity it fell into clichéd, incredulous sensationalism when it could have been a much darker and more realistic portrayal of the very real societal problem of domestic abuse, obviously exacerbated by the recent isolation imposed on families by the Covid situation.
A missed opportunity.