Unspeakable
Unspeakable - Netflix (previously C4)
What do you do if you are deliriously happy in a newish relationship, and then you receive an anonymous tipoff that your beau is not all he seems? This is the situation in which Jo, played by Indira Varma, finds herself. Several years after her divorce and bringing up two children - a ten year-old boy and an eleven year-old girl - she meets a stunningly handsome nurse Danny - played by Luke Treadaway, who eventually moves in. The story takes place around four months after the couple began co-habiting.
This 2017 drama was directed by David Nath, and explores the way blissful joy can turn to disquiet and paranoia. One day Jo receives an anonymous text, warning her that something is going on between Danny and her daughter. Jo has no success in trying to contact the sender of the text. By contrast, the texter sends her a link to a helpline for reporting sexual abuse of children.
Indira Varma’s noble, sensitive face conveys the horror and growing suspicions that this anonymous epistle arouses in her. She begins to question everything Danny says and does. Her fears are exacerbated by her daughter being uncharacteristically withdrawn and uncommunicative. The viewer sees the way a small incident can completely overthrow your way of thinking, subverting assumptions and giving root to multiple tangled stems of fear, doubt, and dismay.
Luke Treadaway, ridiculously good looking as he is (he was once touted as the new Dr Who) is the perfect actor to play a man who might simply be blithely dedicated to his older girlfriend and happy to take on her family or who might have targeted a vulnerable single mother to gain access to her pre-pubescent daughter.
The premise of the drama is gripping, which is why it’s a bit of an anticlimax when the question is resolved within 45 minutes. This could have been a taut psychological thriller, with the audience kept guessing over several episodes whether the man was an utterly contemptible paedophile or whether the woman had been misdirected by someone jealous. There is a little bit of buildup in the way we find out at a dinner party that many of the other school gate mothers fancy Danny - and might therefore have a motive to break the relationship up - but this suspense is not maintained for long enough for it to throb with tension.
When the answer comes, it is very much in terms of a yes (the text was accurate) or no (it was malicious.) Although the acting is superb, this seems a wasted opportunity. We have been introduced to a seemingly contented family, had doubts raised… and then they are rapidly resolved. It’s as if the writer was so pleased by their idea that they couldn’t be bothered to fill it out it and keep audiences transfixed.
Not only is this a disappointment in terms of drama, it also misses the opportunity to tackle the subject of child abuse. There are so many topics that could have been examined - grooming, the child believing they are in a loving relationship with the adult, the self-delusion of the paedophile who convinces himself that children are physically and psychologically mature enough to make a decision about having sex with an adult, and the greyer world of adults coming on to very young adults of 16, 17,and 18,when the child is still not fully mature in body or mind. So many issues could have been raised and weren’t.
Instead, we are left with a drama which is well acted and claustrophobic, but which only keeps you riveted for less than an hour. So, an uncomfortably engaging one-off, but one that dissolves into insignificance far too quickly
.