While browsing through AppleTV+ early this week, I noticed this series which has already finished more than two weeks before. Since other series on this streaming service were either just started or still two or three episodes away from its finale, I thought of giving this a try as the premise sound intriguing. All right then, I'll just head right to it.

Brief Story Line

Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett - Borderlands, Don't Look Up etc) was a well respected and successful documentarian who was living happily with her loving husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen - Luca, The Trial of the Chicago 7 etc), though not too close with their only son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee - X-Men: Dark Phoenix, The Power of the Dog etc). When one night Catherine received a novel from someone, she was shocked to read that it resembled a lot of her past life that she tried to keep secret from her family. 

The novel was published by a retired teacher Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline - Beauty and the Beast live version, A Midsummer Night's Dream etc) whose late wife Nancy (Lesley Manville - Citadel TV series, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris etc) was the actual writer. Apparently Stephen was trying to get revenge on his son Jonathan (Louis Partridge - Enola Holmes, Pistol TV series etc) who died years ago in an incident that involved Catherine when she was young (played by Leila George - Mortal Engines, Animal Kingdom TV series etc).

As Stephen tried his best to ruin Catherine's life through meticulous methods, she was under a lot of pressure to keep her career intact and family together. So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.

End of Brief Story Line

For a psychological thriller series, this one certainly had the usual attributes like the secrets that were slowly revealed and the gradual introduction of the people involved which moved at standard (and a little slow) pace. In the first episode, we were kept intrigued by the story telling which showed the present condition combined with various flashbacks and narration in the background by the characters and by an unrelated person (voiced by Indira Varma - Official Secrets, Game of Thrones TV series etc).  

Anyway, the thing that kept me curious was the reason for such revenge. The meticulous planning of the revenge conducted by Stephen was also quite interesting. When I got to the third episode, I was pretty surprised how graphic the sex scene was. But I could understand the importance of that scene towards the end. One thing that made me feel a bit confused was the narrative related to the detailed scenes that occurred in the past. This confusion led me to some suspicion which was confirmed when I saw the final 7th episode. It was supposed to be shocking but failed to surprise me. Despite the rather predictable twist though, I still admired the way the story was told. Except for few details that I felt was not properly ironed out such as the inconsistency of Catherine's behavior towards his co-workers and family when facing the trouble, or how easily receptive of her situation and only fought back towards the end. 

The series was heavily promoted as created and directed by Alfonso Cuarón which should not be surprising considering he was nominated and won several prestigious awards in the past for his works on sci-fi film Gravity and the 2018 drama Roma. I also read that it was based on 2015 novel of the same title written by Renée Knight. I tried to find out more on the novel and found that most of the plot seemed to be following quite closely with the novel, though with one major change on the revealing of the person who sent the book to Catherine. Looks like the series also garnered positive praise from critics and made it to the Top 10 of AppleTV+ original series. 

The cast in general were convincing in their roles to my opinion. Credits have to be given to the make up department for their works on Kevin Kline and Lesley Manville. The cinematography was quite good too, showing the contrast scenery of dark and gloomy London versus the bright and colorful Italy. Aside from the main cast, there were support characters such as Catherine's mother (Gemma Jones - You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Gentleman Jack TV series etc), Stephen's old friend Justin (Art Malik - The Little Mermaid live version etc), Catherine's assistant Jisoo (Jung Ho-yeon - Squid Game TV series etc) and few others.

Overall this was a quite interesting psychological thriller series. I like the detailed, methodological plan of the revenge and I also like the ending. However, the narrator's story telling was not something that I truly like and few small details that I thought could have been done differently. The twist was not exactly the best point for me either as it was quite easily guessed if you put your thoughts on it (though I think some audience enjoyed it). The drama and acting were likely the part that were appreciated by critics. So if you are looking for a psychological drama thriller with a bit of mystery, then most likely you would like this. But just be ready for some explicit sex scenes that could be disturbing. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars