Resolve is a luxury of the year’s early months and our still attainable resolutions. But how do we stick with a promise when it becomes harder to keep, more unfathomable to fulfil? This is the question faced by a group of elderly friends in Channel 4’s mercurial new mercy-killing drama, Truelove.
Attending the funeral of a mutual friend, old flames Phil (Lindsay Duncan) and Ken (Clarke Peters) find themselves reconnecting after decades apart. He’s spent a career in the shadowy world of the military, while she’s retired following a successful stint in the police force. Over drinks at the pub alongside a few old muckers, the group find themselves drawn into a strange pact. “If I get anywhere near that, take me out the back and shoot me,” Phil says of the deceased who had fought debilitating cancer. And that’s just what they agree to do: “true love” becomes their codename for a shared, half-joking obligation to put one another out of their misery. “Ken can bump us off,” says ex-doctor David (Peter Egan), “and Phil can cover it.” The perfect crime.
