I have dedicated my entire existence to eliminating uncertainty, stress and anxiety in all their possible forms. So there is nothing more compulsively watchable to me than someone not only rushing to embrace those things at every turn but actively creating them – pumping their life so full of exhilarations and potential disasters that it threatens to explode at the lightest touch.
If you are of the same persuasion, settle back – or rather, sit on the edge of your seat and prepare to fall off well before the closing credits – and enjoy the masterful portrait of such a thrill-seeker in the BBC’s rather wonderful Chloe (BBC One). It is a fierce, fresh sort-of-murder-mystery that is as keenly scripted as it is paced, and whose many threads are held firmly together by an outstanding performance from Erin Doherty.
First (properly) seen as Princess Anne in The Crown, Doherty here plays Becky, a quiet twentysomething living with a mother who has early onset dementia. When not at one of her succession of office temp jobs, she spends her time obsessively scrolling through the social media accounts of Chloe (Poppy Gilbert), another twentysomething, who appears to be living a much more successful and glamorous life than her.
It is soon revealed, however, that Becky has found a way of livening up her drab and (as her mother becomes more and more erratic and wounding) increasingly miserable life – namely, by faking several others instead. She is, in broad terms, a con artist. We watch in more or less grudging admiration as she parlays snippets of information, dates, names on invitations and overheard fragments of conversation as she gets first a toehold then a sturdy entrée into the art world.
Her grift takes on a sudden focus, however, when the object of her obsession dies – apparently by suicide, preceded by a soulful quote put up on Chloe’s Instagram account, then confirmed by friends’ heartbroken posts beneath. Armed with a plausible backstory, a more suitable name (Sasha) and a designer coat she has lifted from a coat hook on the way out of the office, Becky gradually worms her way further into the scene. She covertly surveils the funeral, does some online digging and befriends Livia (Pippa Bennett-Warner), one of the bereaved posters and Chloe’s closest pal, to find out more about the non-curated version of Chloe’s life and the circumstances of her death. Another motivation is Becky’s slightly sociopathic instinct for meeting any emotional or practical need presented to her.
The kaleidoscope twists again when we realise that there is a buried connection between Chloe and Becky so great that Becky was, in fact, the last person Chloe called – twice – before she died. Add further complications via a one-night stand, Josh (played by Brandon Micheal Hall with a perfect combination of amused detachment spiked with just a little fear, as he realises that there may be much more to the woman he knows as “Helena” than he ever suspected), and you have an absolute feast of a show.
Created, written and directed by Sex Education alumna Alice Seabright, it has much of that show’s brio and fleet charm, although the subject matter couldn’t be more different. The central intrigue builds and never gets forgotten, but the real tension comes from seeing how far Becky can go – how big a house she can build with purloined business cards, how many plates she can keep spinning, how far out she can go with this jazz riff of a life and still get herself back in. On top of that, it’s a drama that examines the always fascinating gulf between the haves and the have-nots, and the increasingly common abyss running crossways to that – between the perceived figures (all filtered and posed shots presented for public consumption) who seem to be effortlessly winning at life and the ragged, very different realities behind them.
Vitally for a drama about fake identities and shifting truths there is not one false note in it. That’s not to say it’s all massively likely (although before you decide quite how impossible Chloe’s events might be, do watch the upcoming fact-based Netflix drama about Anna Delvey, Inventing Anna, if you haven’t already mainlined everything you can about the most extraordinary scam artist of modern times). But you do understand what drives Becky, with all her gifts – whose useful expression is truncated by circumstance and crammed into a life that promises only to become smaller – to take the risks she takes and thrive on them. I hope she gets away with everything – and then joins Villanelle in Rome.
