The Steamy New Netflix Miniseries You Need To Watch
What is it about secret affairs that make for such good TV? Shows like last year’s Anatomy of a Scandal and Lady Chatterly’s Lover as well as the upcoming Fatal Attraction show we can’t get enough of stories about forbidden love and the risk of getting caught- and now Obsession Netflix’s new miniseries provides us with another example. Starring Richard Armitage (The Hobbit, Hannibal) and Charlie Murphy (Happy Valley), it sees a London surgeon become increasingly obsessed with his son’s new fiancée, and she in turn has an interest in him.
The new miniseries is an updated, more contemporary adaptation of the 1991 novella Damage by author Josephine Hart, which (similar to Anatomy of a Scandal) centres around the fallout of a top British politician’s inappropriate relationship with his son’s girlfriend. Obsession swaps out top politician for top London surgeon, and brings the plot into the modern day.
Armitage plays the role of William (who’s unnamed in the novel), the man who is introduced to his son Jay’s (Do Revenge’s Rish Shah) fiancée Anna (Murphy), and is attracted and soon completely infatuated with her. She also feels a spark of attraction between them, and despite the risk of being caught and the loyalty she has for Jay, the pair begin to have an affair.
Things begin to get as steamy as Fifty Shades of Grey as the affair begins to revolve around BDSM, and as their hidden relationship becomes more intense, so do the suspicions of others. In a similar way to the new version of Fatal Attraction, which updates the story to shift to the much-examined Alex’s perspective, Netflix’s Obsession moves the narrative focus away from William and toward Anna. The production used intimacy coordinators behind the scenes to achieve the desired effect of exploring Anna’s viewpoint, while still making sure to keep the consequences for William enough to make it thrillingly gripping.
One interesting aspect is that the miniseries will be only four parts long, keeping the story tightly written (and faithful to the fairly short book) and allowing you to get through it breezily. Alongside the central three characters, Indira Varma (Game of Thrones, Paranoid) stars as Ingrid, William’s wife and Jay’s mother, Pippa Bennett-Warner (Gangs of London) as Peggy and Anil Goutam (Eastenders) as Edward.
The four-parter will be available in full on Netflix on 13th April.
