Dead Ringers opens with a bravura set piece that establishes much of the tone for what’s to come. Twin doctors Elliot and Beverly Mantle are in a bar after a hard day of delivering babies and battling emergencies when a tiresome man decides to disturb their peace with his “friendliness” and “banter”. They take it in turns to beat the verbal crap out of the dickhead – whom they decide, over his baffled objections, to name “Larry”. This perks them up at least as much as their drinks and ends in their total victory. It’s fast, fierce, very funny, properly feminist and a fine way to open a show about a pair of gynaecologist sisters bent on revolutionising maternity and women’s health care. That at least one of the pair is already edged with delicious wildness is just a bonus.
The Mantle twins are played by Rachel Weisz and what a great time she has with them both, and what a great time she gives the viewers. Beverly is the quieter, more insecure, more cerebral half of the pair and her vision of the future Mantle birthing centre revolves round the empowerment of patients and the removal of the accrued stigmas and myths around pregnancy, childbirth and women’s bits generally. Chillier Elliot is happiest in the lab and envisions a state-of-the-art facility where she can make fertility miracles happen and push the boundaries of what is feasible in bespoke babies. But I’m sure their radically different approaches will prove nothing but fruitfully complementary and definitely not tear them apart like a perineum in a breech birth.
