Wanderlust

Netflix

Toni Collette is having quite a year. Just when you stopped having to sleep with the lights on after watching her in

here she is in new Netflix drama In some ways, this one might be even more terrifying.

It starts with one of the most excruciatingly tense and awkward sex scenes you’re ever likely to watch. Collette’s character Joy and her husband Alan (Steven Mackintosh) just aren’t on the same page, and the more they try to talk their way through it the more cringeworthy it gets. Things have been this way for a while, and we see the catalyst (slash convenient excuse) play out in a series of flashbacks — the cycling accident that shattered Joy’s pelvis, as well as, you know, her confidence.

There is an irony to the fact that Joy, a therapist, and Alan, an English teacher, are so bad at communicating with each other. It takes the whole first episode, and some fairly unlikely chance encounters, for them to finally come out and tell each other what they want, and what the whole series is about: exploring an open relationship.

Written by British playwright Nick Payne, who moved into screenwriting with 2016 movie it’s a rewarding watch if you can handle the cringe. It’s not just confined to the bedroom, either — try the scene where Alan gets stoned and listens to Warren G with his significantly younger, cooler and hotter (you can tell this series was written by a man, can’t you) colleague, Clare (Zawe Ashton).

Joy’s parallel encounter with a man she meets at aqua jogging is a little more believable, and provides the episode’s highlight when she blurts out the confession: “I tossed off a man from my hydrotherapy group.” Worth watching for lines like that alone.

Hereditary, Wanderlust. The Sense of an Ending,