I think, overall, we’ve only ourselves to blame. If 2020 has taught us nothing else, it is surely that things never turn out as well as you’d hope. Nevertheless we went straight ahead and invested our last remaining coins of hope and optimism in a shiny drama from HBO and Sky Atlantic.
For five weeks we tuned in to their six-part whodunnit in our increasing millions around the globe, turning the tale of the starry Manhattan couple Grace and Jonathan Fraser (Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant), whose lives come apart when he is arrested for the murder of his lover Elena, into an international hit.
We filled the internet with theories and thoughts about who the murderer was and how they did it, conjured motive and means, posited convoluted backstories and connections for everyone.
There was a Grace faction – she was a sleepwalker, in a fugue state when she did it, or simply full of rage at her husband’s infidelity. There was a Franklin (Donald Sutherland) faction – an adulterous husband himself, he hated seeing himself in his son-in-law Jonathan and the pain he had caused his wife now in his daughter. His limitless funds could easily hire the best assassin to kill Elena and frame Jonathan. He definitely did it, unless it was his grandson Henry (Noah Jupe), who knew about his father’s affair and wanted to keep his parents together. But how could a boy kill a grown woman!
It was almost certainly Sylvia (Lily Rabe), who was otherwise getting far too much airtime. She was either driven by loyalty to her best friend Grace, or revenge after a previous secret affair with Jonathan. She also knew the prosecuting attorney, which has got to mean something, right? Then of course there was Elena’s own, cuckolded husband, left holding a baby that wasn’t his. Or it was her young son, or it was the janitor (class hatred, y’know), or, or, or …
We got involved, is what I’m saying. We leaned right in and hungered for the delicious denouement. You could argue that when it came, it gave us precisely what we deserved: a lesson in the value of low expectations. At best, you could argue that the reveal was appropriately meta for our modern, sophisticated age. At worst you could throw a brick through the screen while roaring that an audience hasn’t been this damnably treated since it was all a dream for Bobby in Dallas. If you are not old enough to understand this reference, just be glad. Enjoy your youth.
As much of a disappointment as the identity of the murderer was, I’m not here to deal in spoilers of that magnitude. So let’s just say that everything fell apart in that final episode. What had been enjoyably slick became silly. What had been sombre became cheesy. Tension dissolved into disbelief. And what I suspect was meant to be the real and/or unexpected twist, involving a rogue witness, failed even to deliver on its own, already unsatisfactory terms. It wasn’t clear how it was engineered – the viewer was left to guess and infer too much about method and motive to believe in it.
But let us end on a positive note. It was a six-hour do, not eight or 12 or 24. It gave us all a new appreciation of how valuable a motile face can be to acting. And, if there is any justice in the world – I know, I know, but I’ve found a last farthing in the coin purse of my soul – Noma Dumezweni WILL win an Emmy for her barnstorming performance as the defence lawyer Haley Fitzgerald, and have her pick of projects next year.
As for the rest of us, we just need to remember – low expectations. The key to happiness. Anything else will be your undoing.