Some fraught and morally complex spaces are entered in the six-part New Zealand drama After the Party, which is executed with a white-knuckle intensity that almost pushes it into the realm of a thriller. The show is led by an expertly layered performance from Robyn Malcolm as Penny Wilding, a high school teacher who believes she caught her ex-husband, Phil (Peter Mullan), engaged in a sex crime with an intoxicated minor during his birthday party. The easy choice would have been not to show it but, like her, we see the moment around which the show pivots.
Penny is convinced she is right about what she saw and she’s not the kind of person to let things go. At first I found her character thoroughly likable; one early scene depicts her in a classroom explaining pornography to young male students straightforwardly and empathetically: she’s clearly a teacher who thinks outside the box, though not in the extravagant stand-on-the-desk, Oh Captain My Captain sort of way.
