William Farrow (Richard Armitage) is not just a surgeon – he is a brilliant surgeon making headline news by successfully separating conjoined babies! In fact, he is not just a brilliant surgeon making headline news by successfully separating conjoined twins, but modest too! (“A pleasure to watch you in there,” says one of his younger colleagues, before William assures him it was a team effort). Plus, not only is he a brilliant but modest twin-divider, he is long-married to a hot successful lady barrister (Indira Varma), so he is sexy and feminist too! All in all, it is about time everything went to pot by reason of him falling into obsessive love with his twentysomething son’s mysterious girlfriend-cum-fiancee Anna (Charlie Murphy) and making an absolute tit of himself.
And lo, because Netflix’s new four-part “erotic thriller” filling in the recently vacated Sex/Life slot is based on Josephine Hart’s 1991 novel Damage, it comes to pass. Damage, readers of a certain age will remember, was the following year made into a film starring Jeremy Irons as the infatuated older man, Juliette Binoche as the enigmatic femme fatale and Miranda Richardson stealing the whole show as the shattered wife and mother.
