Hewson has it in the ‘Eyes’ chiller while Heigl lights up ‘Firefly Lane’
BEHIND HER EYES
Netflix, from Wednesday FIREFLY LANE Netflix
There has, over the last few years, been an almost palpable sense of yearning for a breakout role for Eve Hewson, a reason to believe that the torch of talent — for her father is none other than Bono — has, indeed, finally been passed. Critics generally weren’t too keen on The Luminaries, last year’s BBC historical drama — although her performance was singled out for praise — but Behind Her Eyes, seemed, if Netflix’s hype machine could be believed, to have potential as a real star-making vehicle.
It’s an adaptation of English author Sarah Pinborough’s bestselling thriller novel, and tells the story of a young woman, Louise (Simona Brown), a single mother, who, after being stood up by a friend, has a chance encounter with a tall and blindingly handsome Scot (Tom Bateman). He plays just a little bit too hard to get (they go for a drink, he still doesn’t go home with her) but when Louise gets a new job as a secretary at a psychiatric clinic, her new boss turns out to be the Scot from the bar, a psychiatrist named David. It’s awkward but soon Louise is drawn into a kind of psychosexual love triangle. She has an affair with dreamy David and strikes up an awkward friendship with his creepy, and possibly mentally ill, wife Adele (Hewson). In flashback, we see Adele’s early life in a mental health facility where she grows close to a young, gay Scottish man, who, like Louise, is plagued by ferocious night terrors. David rescued Adele from this life and in return she married him and brought her considerable fortune into the marriage.
Like Patrick Bergin’s character in Sleeping With the Enemy,
he is ferociously controlling and has his co-dependent spouse medicated up to her eyes. And yet, as the episodes pass, we begin to suspect that Adele is not the whiter-than-white victim she appears to be.
There are some interesting things about it. Steve Lightfoot
(Hannibal) and Angela LaManna ( The Haunting of Bly Manor)
adapted the Pinborough novel, and their horror credentials are apparent all through the series. The sets are almost a character in their own right, suffocatingly tasteful interiors, with telltale notes of menace (a pot boils on a beautiful stove as the tension builds). It confirms, if Normal People and Bridgerton were not evidence enough, that sex, after a small screen hiatus of a few decades, is very much back — Louise has the most theatrical orgasms since Meg Ryan in
When Harry Met Sally. And Hewson is good, mostly exhibiting a disconcerting Children of the Corn blankness that hints at the darkness in the title.
The problem, again, is that the overall series doesn’t really buffet her upward. Bateman’s performance as Dr McStubbly has jarring emotional tones. One moment he’s steely and brooding like Christian Grey, the next he’s bumbling like an awkward teenager. His artificially breathy manner of speaking and raspy Scottish accent make him sound like a seductive duck.
He has zero chemistry with the beautiful Simona Brown, who, as Louise, always seems too self possessed and indignant to be taken in by any of the far-fetched plot devices. “A tenner says you’ll never guess the ending” boasts the blurb for the series, but that might be more because it’s so schlocky and melodramatic than because it’s a genius drawing together of the story’s strands.
Few actresses have endured
more bad press over the years than Katherine Heigl. She’s said herself she had a reputation for being “difficult”, which began after a war of words between her and her Knocked Up co-star (Seth Rogen) and director (Judd Apatow). After briefly considering leaving Hollywood, she’s back, with Firefly Lane, a series that sounds like it might be a brand of air freshener but is instead a Beaches-style saga of female friendship through the years, from childhood to adulthood. Heigl plays Tully, a jaded talk show host, whose best friend Kate (Sarah Chalke) is trying to get back into the workforce after her marriage breaks down. There is genuine chemistry between the two women and, unlike the roles that made her famous, this one taps into Heigl’s inherent saltiness. The storylines take in issues as grim as rape, cancer and suicide but it retains a lightness of tone and the subtlety to show that sometimes the dearest friends can hurt you the most.