This review contains spoilers. Its performances absolutely deserve recognition. Emily Watson’s portrayal of Yvonne Carmichael has been detailed and nuanced. Mark Duggan too, who played husband Gary, is clearly much more than just a safe pair of acting hands. Alongside them, director Jessica Hobbs told a clear-headed and empathetic sad story. Best drama though? Not quite. Though the courtroom scenes made worthwhile points about the savagery and humiliation women, whether there as experts or defendants, can face on the dock, the last two episodes felt undermined by a central inconsistency. Namely: Dr Yvonne Carmichael isn’t naïve or stupid, so why did she think she could get away with lying about her affair? And the Yvonne we knew wasn’t an idiot. Which is why her insistence that she and Mark “knew” each other and that he wasn’t “a monster” but her “shining knight” felt unconvincingly callow. Love does strange things to people, but could lust really have transformed bright, sceptical Yvonne into a besotted prat? By the by, I’m generally not a fan of complaints re. plausibility in TV shows—it’s so often a joyless, point-missing approach to take to fiction, the dull equivalent of complaining about regional accents straying out of the parish boundaries—but when a drama like this aspires to realism, these things chip away at its impact. Mark’s empty characterisation added more dissatisfaction to episodes three and four. His plea keeping him from the stand, we never heard from him or got into his head. The novelty of a well-drawn female character being paired with a blank male cypher is a noteworthy reversal, but not a positive one. When it came down to it, the question of the relative madness or badness of Mark Costley (he proved that – if £100,000 is the going rate for bail I must remember to stay on the straight and narrow) was hard to muster much interest in. Classy performances aside, this series’ strength was its critique of the justice system, especially concerning sexual assault. Sweep away the flimsy thriller stuff and that’s what remains: a depressingly astute appraisal of the shortcomings in attitude and approach to survivors of rape. That makes it worthwhile, yes, but it doesn’t add up to greatness. Read Louisa’s review of the previous episode here.
