I have a confession to make: At a certain point late in the first season I started watching this show just to see how bad it would get. How over-wrought, meandering, how bloated with melodrama, how attenuated with weak tension, how dishwater dull. I don't know why it intrigued me to keep watching so morbidly, episode after episode. It's like negating in slow-motion. Maybe I was waiting for them all to drown at a clambake by some miracle. Maybe I have too much time on my hands. But if you want to feel time crawling across the floor, binge-watch this blob. You may feel elderly when it's over.
What first sparked it for me was Hagai Levi's writing. He was the best thing about the show and he left after a few episodes. The Rashomon device in the first episode was done elegantly, filled with ambivalent turns, inviting us into private corners of consciousness, hinting at as-yet unknowable outcomes of human desire. Ruth Wilson and Dominic West are in the hands of good writer here and they swim along well. They are ordinary people waking up to complex passions.
I started noticing that Ruth Wilson looks nauseated much of the time. Not surprising in light of the way she was treated by the people who ran this show after Levi left. Then I studied Dominic West's face and noticed that he ALSO looked like he was about to throw-up quite frequently. How about a beach scene where they both kneel and puke into the surf, holding hands...Another counterfeit catharsis in a show packed with them.
This show promises a lot but keeps on delivering these two dreary retreads. Didn't anyone stop to ask: Who cares if they're having an affair? Their love, or whatever it is, is tedious. Glad I wasn't in it.
What first sparked it for me was Hagai Levi's writing. He was the best thing about the show and he left after a few episodes. The Rashomon device in the first episode was done elegantly, filled with ambivalent turns, inviting us into private corners of consciousness, hinting at as-yet unknowable outcomes of human desire. Ruth Wilson and Dominic West are in the hands of good writer here and they swim along well. They are ordinary people waking up to complex passions.
I started noticing that Ruth Wilson looks nauseated much of the time. Not surprising in light of the way she was treated by the people who ran this show after Levi left. Then I studied Dominic West's face and noticed that he ALSO looked like he was about to throw-up quite frequently. How about a beach scene where they both kneel and puke into the surf, holding hands...Another counterfeit catharsis in a show packed with them.
This show promises a lot but keeps on delivering these two dreary retreads. Didn't anyone stop to ask: Who cares if they're having an affair? Their love, or whatever it is, is tedious. Glad I wasn't in it.
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