As streaming libraries have been populated with more and more series, with more and more episodes, a phenomenon has emerged that is known as “the background binge”. It is when people turn on the TV, find a show to watch, put it on, and then proceed to do a variety of household tasks while barely watching the programme. That might sound like no way to truly watch television – the fruit of so many people’s hard labour – but it might be the best, or only, way to endure Netflix’s new eight-part thriller, Fool Me Once.
After her husband Joe (Richard Armitage) is shot dead, Maya (Michelle Keegan) struggles to hold the pieces of her life together. That means juggling sole custody of their daughter with her job training helicopter pilots, not to mention dealing with Joe’s prickly, moneyed family. Among its members are Joe’s mother Judith (Joanna Lumley), the family matriarch who never quite bought her son’s romance, and Joe’s brother and sister, Neil (James Northcote) and Caroline (Hattie Morahan).
