Our House

Not so much a review of a mediocre 'thriller', more a crit on UK TV drama as a whole. It seems to me that we're trying to impress foreign audiences with a perceived standard of living that is totally unreal. A house like this Edwardian gem would be worth what... £1,000,000 in London? Not far off it at any rate. How on earth could these chumps afford that? Left in a will? Lottery winners? Drug lords? This is not a one-off either. Loads of these middle class thrillerettes spring up with factory production line regularity... and they all live in sodding architect-designed masterpieces in the country, or Tudor relics, stately mansions or six bedroomed gated community horrors. Life just isn't like this for most people. I literally turn off when I see things heading in this direction. 'Happy Valley'... now that's realistic. Real people living real lives in normal houses. Who are we trying to impress? Like I said... there's an eye on foreign markets here - look at the lovely UK... they all shop at Waitrose, have bean-to-cup machines in echoing marble worktop kitchens and their kids have bedrooms that double for conference venues. Jeez. Give me a break. Get real!

This intricately plotted four-part thriller started intriguingly and dramatically with Tuppence Middleton's Fiona character returning to her home after a weekend away just in time to find that another couple is moving into her plush London family town house and that she knows nothing about it.

From this arresting opening, we soon learn that she is in a rocky marriage and indeed is separated from Martin Compston's Bram (Bram?) who despite being a doting dad to their two young boys, can't resist the old forbidden fruit when Fi's best friend knocks on his door in an inebriated state after she's fallen out with her own husband, although oddly we don't get to see her guy's reaction to the fling.

Anyway, it soon becomes obvious that everything leads back to Bram who has conveniently disappeared and can't be reached leaving Fi to turn detective to try to get her £2,000,000 house back. Everything she tries seems to lead to a dead-end but at least there's some respite for her in the form of handsome hunky Rupert Penry-Jones Toby character who seems ever so nice and supportive, or is he what he seems...?

Bram, meanwhile, on this enforced break has been enticed into bed by a confident young woman who afterwards seems to know a lot about him and just won't go away...

Cue multiple flashbacks and criss-crossing story-lines as we crucially learn that Bram has previously been lured into a dead-of-night road-rage encounter with fateful consequences not only for him, but even more so for the young passenger of another car innocently caught up in the incident.

It's strange at first to credit that it's all about the house but when you realise the price of property in London these days, perhaps it's not that much of a stretch. Anyway, over four taut, if improbably plotted and characterised episodes, each ending on a good-old fashioned cliffhanger, this show certainly kept the viewer guessing right up to the end. Well acted by the principals, once you swallowed all the improbable coincidences and plot-holes in the narrative, this was exciting and satisfying prime-time entertainment.

A woman returns home, to find her husband has sold their house, and vanished.

I thoroughly enjoyed this four part series, I have read some of the reviews, I'm not sure what the naysayers were watching, this was a tense, dramatic, well acted series, which is loaded with surprises, twists and turns galore.

There's a degree of originality to it, it's unlike anything I've watched for some time, at the end of part one I was perplexed at how the story could be stretched out, at the end of part two I was left in no doubt, it went in a very different direction.

It's slick, it's well produced, it's certainly well acted, Tuppence Middleton, Martin Compston and Rupert Penry Jones are all great, as are the supporting cast.

You'll be left baffled and intrigued, you won't be able to predict events.

8/10.

Episode 1 was good laying out the story frame. Found it intriguing - episode 2 did not add enough, by three it had nothing. Original idea wasted. The whole point of UK drama having fewer episodes than US drama is that the content is rich and concentrated - now we have short and dilute - not a good bargain.

On the plus side the production values were nice and it looked great, though a few more light bulbs would have been good - do all interiors have to be shot in cave like darkness all the time these days?

I like Martin Compson and Tuppence Middleton but they didn't make a convincing couple in or out of love and I felt little connection with either of them. It felt more style than substance, the storyline was quite a stretch and wasn't helped by the frequent time jumps.

It wasn't terrible, but overall I found it dull and far-fetched with unengaging characters, so for me a miss.