Dave
This miniseries stars Emily Watson as a middle-aged, married scientist who lives and works in London. She meets a man with whom she quickly embarks on a sex-only secret affair, involving having sex in public places in central London. She is raped by a colleague and then asks her sex buddy to kill the rapist. The plot is ludicrous. A quiet, highly-educated, married, middle-aged woman with a successful career wouldn't risk it all by having casual sex with a stranger in public! In the unlikely event that she has a sex buddy, he wouldn't commit a murder for her!
Prismark10
Apple Tree Yard is passed off as a racy bonk-fest with a twist. Dr Yvonne Carmichael (Emily Watson) is an unhappily married scientist. Her husband is cheating on her and one night she meets a mysterious, charismatic stranger who gives little away about himself, Mark Costley (Ben Chaplin) and they have passionate sex including a small backstreet alley, Apple Tree Yard.However when she is later raped by a work acquaintance, Yvonne feels out of her depth. Unable to turn to her husband, go to the police she confides in Costley. Both are later charged with murdering the rapist and Costley reveals their affair and blames her for putting him up to it.The serial had passion and mystery, it is an adaptation of Louise Doughty's novel. The film takes a turn with the rape scene and Yvonne later feels scared and vulnerable. The final episode is taken up mostly with the courtroom scenes as Yvonne and her husband put on a brave face to the public and the jury.The drama never really soared as far as I was concerned, you never felt sympathy for many of the characters. The rape scene was nasty and you always think Costley is going to be too shifty. There is a twist at the end between the two former lovers.
Adams5905
It's difficult to comment and criticize specific issues without giving too much away-I shall edit and add additional material as the drama unfolds...I'm rather a fan of slow-burners-I certainly prefer them to the usual juvenile offerings of whizz-bangs, pointless shouty-shouty arguments and endless car chases which seem to permeate everything these days, but I think the BBC have taken things rather to the extreme this time. Sunday night dramas are not really my cup of tea, but after hearing an interview on the wireless with both Emily Watson (who sadly seems to have fallen off the radar in recent years-I loved her in Gosford Park), and Ben Chaplin (a woefully underused actor IMHO), I thought 'why not?'.. Our story opens with Dr Yvonne Carmichael viewed through the window of a prison service transport (a goof, actually, but an understandable one-all windows in these vans have one-way, not two-way glass), staring at the Thames, and reminiscing and ruminating over the course of her life, and the events of the last nine months. Then a segue to her earlier interrogation by a Select Commons Committee (and we discover she's done this before) tells us she is a highly educated professional, and considered an expert in her field, which makes the story that subsequently unfolds all the more difficult to swallow. Yes, I agree with the basic premise that life doesn't end at 50, nor do a woman's sexual urges automatically switch off, but it's difficult to match this sudden outpouring of reckless passion with Watson's otherwise virtually deadpan performance-another character comments later in the episode that she looked like the cat that got the cream (I'm paraphrasing), but I could see no change in her demeanour, indeed, when she suspects her husband (another fine workmanlike performance from Mark Bonnar-shame we never get to see him on the big screen) of past infidelity, and challenges him on the subject, she might just as well have been discussing the shopping list. The only time she evinced any emotion (other than with The Stranger), was in relating the proposition put to her by one of her graduate students, and that was quickly stifled... This contributes to a complete lack of empathy and engagement with her character. Although we know virtually nothing about The Stranger (Ben Chapman), his is by far the more sympathetic role, admitting to his foibles, effortlessly charming, and as excited to embark on a new adventure as a small child... I think the problem here is poor direction. I'm not familiar with Jessica Hobbs' work (see above), but she seems to be directing by the numbers here, and rather sketchily at that. We know that the two main characters are played by very able actors, and I've no doubt that the source material is top-notch, but in the modern tradition, this mini-series has been stretched to cover four hour-long episodes, by introducing too much 'filler', and lots of staring-into-the-middle-distance, which is supposed to convey deep, meaningful thinking (and fails), when it would have been far better to smarten up the pace, and reduce the running time.I'm no prude, by any means, but I fail to see why modern dramas rely so heavily on salaciously suggestive detail (without actually revealing anything), and deliberately shocking language, while ignoring plot and character development. In this case, granted, it's intrinsic to the setup to keep details of The Stranger to a minimum, especially as the drama is told from Carmichael's POV, and we do learn something of Yvonne's home life (she's soon to become a grandmother), but cannot see the benefit of delivering such lines as 'you're ****ing a spook'-this from a professional expert addressed earlier as 'professor'-it might also be pointed out here that Carmichael's explanation of the known functions of, breakdown and distribution of human genetic material would not have passed muster in a GCSE examination-I know she was interpreting to a non-expert, but as a leading academic in her field, this just didn't work.This first episode ended after a shockingly brutal attack (more evidence that this is definitely presented from the female perspective-by no means a bad thing), and, rather in the 'Saturday Morning Pictures' tradition, left us on a cliff-edge, ready for the next instalment. It is reasonably well-written, beautifully photographed (London never looked so grey, and yet so enticing at the same time), but it desperately needs to go up a gear, or risk losing its audience. Let's see what happens next week-watch this space...
kowalskipenguin-42109
Expecting a show with a plot driven by the intricacies of the novel, I encountered a sex-centered, infuriating typical sexual drama. The main character's motives are half-baked, and the plot is sickening to endure. Whatever "ingenious" production they were trying to create, whatever show they were "proud" of, has dissipated under the work of sloppy writing. Sexual themes are great, but this show has managed to make a bad first impression by butchering the sexual drama theme. And the rape scene, while accurate to the novel, felt all the more distasteful, especially when left as a cliffhanger, as if to motivate the audience to await in hope for the result of rape.
