Welcome back to Parminster, den of middle-class iniquity and huge wine glasses, for a second series of the superbly gripping domestic thriller.
When we last saw Gemma Foster (Suranne Jones) she was recovering from her husband Simon’s affair with young Kate (Bertie Carvel and Jodie Comer) and getting her life back together. Or so we thought.
The Gemma we meet here is jarred back into her obsessive ways by the news that Simon and Kate are returning from London with their daughter Amelie. And it becomes obvious by the end of episode one that Simon, rather than learning from his mistakes, has been emboldened to add to them because he wants to take Tom, their son, and effectively erase Gemma from the picture altogether.
Diagnosis
The show opens with closeups of a paper guillotine; a nice touch considering the emasculation we waited five episodes for in series one. Gemma’s driving force then was to see Simon suffer the consequences of his actions. Now he’s back, richer, with a beautiful young wife and child and a determination to take more than his share, her sense of injustice is multiplied.
I feel both furious for her and tense beyond words at the prospect of another series about a woman made slave to her own bitterness. I want her to win, dammit. And clever writer Mike Bartlett knows how to keep us hanging on.
The red envelopes delivered to all the characters in the opening scenes (a nice way to reintroduce them) contain an invitation to Simon and Kate’s homecoming party. Is it really wise to hold a party in a glass house made entirely of right angles considering what happened at the last one?
But first, Gemma’s ill-advised house snooping. Hands up if you screamed, “No!” when the camera lingered on the ajar patio door of Simon’s new home then cut back to Gemma looking at it. I am both profoundly depressed by her renewed obsession with revenge and rubbing my hands with glee.
When Simon arrives, he asks rather cruelly and unnecessarily, “Do you think about me?” Two years on, this couple are still desperate to get a rise out of each other. Despite his claims that he just wants to get on with his life, he can’t resist pulling Gemma’s strings and she can’t help dancing. Isn’t love awful?
Things at work aren’t helped by a hostile new partner in the GP practice who I initially couldn’t place then realised was Sherlock’s evil sister Eurus, that chameleon-like actress Sian Brooke. So far her only crime is passive aggression but she’s definitely one to keep an eye on.
When Gemma sends young Tom off to dad’s party and heads out on a date, it’s an obvious attempt to grit her teeth and move through the pain. But she lasts minutes before declaring the date a mistake and co-opting James (later revealed to be Tom’s teacher – small towns, who’d live in them?) to go to the party with her.
The first sting comes when all the friends who promised they wouldn’t attend are at the party, swigging wine in the fairy-lit garden and toasting the toxic two. Kate glides around her show home in a long white dress and Simon smugs it up while Gemma seethes.
When she finally confronts him in his bedroom (after going through the bedside drawers) their face-off teeters constantly on the verge of a hate shag. She could feel his erection when they stood close together downstairs. She knows she has power over him and he admits it, while in the same breath telling her to move on.
Their spiteful games are all very entertaining but the collateral damage is downstairs getting hammered on Gewürztraminer and trying to cop off with his teenage girlfriend. Poor Tom.
Remembering she brought the hapless James to this psychodrama, she explains calmly to him that Simon ruined her life and she won’t watch while everyone celebrates his happiness. At this point, James should run but doesn’t.
It’s the only thing that jars in this opener. With such a nightmare first date in the company of this vengeful she-wolf, he asks to see her again. Talk about running after a coruscating ball of flame and asking it for a cuddle. Is he smitten that quickly, or will we find out he has damage of his own?
All the broken people. The next day, Simon arrives to start the war in earnest. Whatever he said to Tom, it’s worked and the two of them leave a distraught, almost breathlessly enraged Gemma alone with her jars of chemicals. “There’s only one way I’m leaving here now and that’s in a coffin,” snarls Simon at her before leaving with the one person she loves. Do not tease us, Mike Bartlett.
As Simon and his family sit around the dinner table, a new happy unit, Gemma dissolves her wedding ring in acid and lights a fag while she watches it fizzle.
Prognosis
What the hell has just been set in motion? Is this going to be a woman sent mad by rejection and betrayal doing something she regrets? The way Simon’s been acting, she would be within her rights to actually kill him and we know she can dissolve a corpse if she gets hold of enough acid.
This series promises to be as explosive, gripping and toxic as the first. I’m so in.
Notes
I love the tiny but affirmative slam of her car door into his as she leaves the new house. It’s the small things she know will enrage him.
Kate’s quick decision to hide Gemma’s present from Simon hints that she doesn’t altogether trust her new husband either. Will both women unite against him?
Those tense, plaintive strings are back on the soundtrack, playing out like Gemma’s inner turmoil. I imagine two modern dancers in her skull, thrashing about in baggy trousers, clutching their heads.
She smelled their lube! At least she stopped short of Edge of Darkness dildo-sniffing.
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