The joy of the second series of Doctor Foster (BBC1) is that we now know it is not aiming for gritty drama and failing, but aiming for histrionic melodrama and succeeding beyond its wildest expectations (the first quintet took in affairs, suicide, lies, deceit, pregnancy, abortion, business corruption, bankruptcy, the smashing of ornaments and Hippocratic oaths into several million pieces, public denunciation and fake child-murder). We can now run gleefully towards the waves of madness – already rushing furiously over the shores of sanity by the end of this opener – dive in and let the waters take us wherever the riptides lead.
An hour of the five in and I’ve already had so much fun I can barely type. The new series begins two years after the Fosters’ divorce. The opening scenes show envelopes arriving at the houses of all the people we met last series. It was like Harry Potter without the owls. They contain cards from Bastard Simon and Mistress Kate and proclaim “We’re Back and We’re Married!” Everyone, apart from Dr Gemma herself, is invited to the wedding-celebration-cum-housewarming at the marital bower.
Naturally Gemma hotfoots it round there while they’re out. It’s an impressive place, even if you didn’t know that two years ago the purchaser was insolvent and all his assets went to his wife in the divorce. Plate glass everywhere and an indoor swimming pool, which I suspect should have been shaped like Chekhov’s gun – you don’t put one of those in the first episode of your drama if someone’s not going to end up floating face down there by the fifth.
Simon drives up to the front door in a shiny new car. He smirks more smirkingly than anyone has ever smirked before to find her there, before delivering the most perfect pass-agg speech ever penned (I mentally prostrated myself at the feet of writer Mike Bartlett then and never really rose thereafter), noting that she’s wearing an old top and driving the same car as when he left and advising her to “move on”.
This galvanises Gemma. And Galvanised Gemma is what we want. It’s what we came to see. Soon she is on her way to the party she wasn’t invited to, handsome date in tow (he’s a patient, but I wouldn’t quibble over professional niceties now), in a dress that literally gives Simon an erection as soon as he sees her. Kate delivers a speech to the guests that takes Simon’s pass-agg efforts of 20 minutes earlier and blows them out of the water. She thanks Gemma for coming “even though you weren’t invited at all”, and knows that it must mean “you’re ready to move on … hopefully it will be peace and quiet from now on. Do you wish us well?”
At this point my entire being narrows to a single thought, my soul dedicated to a single hope, my mind to a single ambition – that Gemma, over the next four weeks and hours, destroys them both. Slowly, painfully, thoroughly. Breaks every plate glass window in the house and makes Kate forcefeed the shards to Simon before she throws him into the swimming pool.
A conversation upstairs between Gemma and Simon that clearly sets the groundwork for a month of mind/sex games that will in no way end well fuels my hopes. When their son Tom discovers her hot date was his schoolteacher and moves in with Simon, my cup runneth over. For Gemma takes a jarful of nitric acid (I’m going to assume this is a common household item in Parminster) out into the garden, drops her wedding ring (previously hidden in a bedroom drawer as a last vestige of hope and sentiment) in it and smokes a cigarette as it dissolves into nothing. She and I are both now consecrated to watching Simon and Kate’s world burn. I am here for you, Gemma. Whatever you need, I am here for you.
Unless of course I am in space. The 21st-Century Race for Space (BBC2) saw Dr Brian Cox dashing round the extraordinary possibilities opening up for mining, manufacturing on and colonising other planets. This, of course, is largely thanks to the private investment companies set up by billionaires eager to unleash profits and to provide themselves with the haven of all havens when our planet finally goes to hell. It was truly eye-opening; seeing what is already possible forced you to recalibrate all your scales. Madman moves to visionary. Visionary moves to CEO. CEO moves to Mars by 2030. Incredible, yet – apparently – not. Great news, given the scorched earth Gemma has in mind.
