Erin Doherty as Becky
(Picture: BBC/Mam Tor Productions/York Tillyer/Real World)This immediately absorbing thriller from writer and director Alice Seabright, who has previously helmed a handful of episodes of Netflix hit Sex Education, plays out like a Patricia Highsmith story for the Instagram age, with all the suspense, secrets and stress that entails.
Its anti-heroine Becky, played by The Crown breakout star Erin Doherty in her first TV lead role, certainly has shades of Ripley. We first meet her in the dead of night, her smartphone grasped inches from her eyes as she stares at images of symmetrical spas, immaculately laid out knitwear in neutral tones, complicated yoga poses. She keeps returning to one profile in particular, belonging to Chloe Fairbourne (Poppy Gilbert), a red-headed woman of about her own age, who laughs with friends, clutches cocktails and kisses her husband. It’s a horribly arresting scene; you can feel Becky’s loneliness and self-loathing calcify around her as she scrolls.
