By Anne Brodie
Apple Tree Yard, released theatrically in 2017 is now available as a series well worth resurrecting. Sure, there are problems with pacing and our changing feelings about the characters, but hang on – the slow burn is ideal, things feel lifelike and resonant and at the en when we are slammed with a wildly unexpected double twist, we say to ourselves, I thought I knew them, how did I miss that. The sexually driven suspense thriller based on the novel by Louise Doughty stars Emily Watson as Yvonne, Ben Chaplin as X and Mark Bonnar as Yvonne’s husband Gary. She’s relatively happily married, happy in her work as a leading genome researcher. So why is her opening line “before I met you, I was a civilised woman”? A stranger finds her after a lecture and a spark is ignited, they have it off in an elevator almost immediately. Later she texts him to say that was the most reckless thing she’s done in her life. They meet in Apple Tree Yard for their encounters, a back alley with CCTTV. Knowing they’re being watched adds a certain frisson; they don’t want to be outed but. and he wows her with his knowledge of surveillance. He’s a “spook”, a spy. She has X’s phone number and they speak at night often, in secret. She complains that she doesn’t know his name and compares sex with him to being eaten by a wolf, as their obsession grows. The affair continues but a violent rape by a coworker sidelines her. X vows to seek revenge on him. Meanwhile Gary knows nothing about anything. Things ramp up, lives are changed and then, the piece de resistance, a brilliant, effed up, thunderous ending. Four episodes. Now on BritBox.