The fear factor
When the second season of Doctor Foster starts, it seems that Gemma has finally got her life back together after her husband cheated on her with a younger woman. But hatred and torment soon come flooding back for Gemma and revenge is in the air. Suranne J
Doctor Foster star Suranne Jones uses just one word to explain why the British drama has been such a big hit internationally. “Fear,” Jones states, without hesitation. The 39-year-old actress expands on why that particular emotion resonated with viewers. “We all have fear of infidelity and fear of not being loved,” she says. “Trust is an issue that is very personal to each individual. You want to feel love and trust and all those things that bind relationships together – with your partner, your friends, your relatives or any loved ones.” Jones, who won the Bafta Best Actress Award for her performance in Doctor Foster’s first series, continues that, “When you introduce a drama about those things, people instantly identify with it. That’s why relationship and family dramas work so well when they’re done right.” The final episode of the first series of Doctor Foster attracted an eye-watering 10 million viewers in the UK alone. It was an equally big success all over the world. Viewers around the globe were gripped as they watched Dr Gemma Foster (Suranne Jones) go from highly regarded GP and pillar of the community to unhinged, vengeful monster after she discovered that her apparently loving husband Simon (Bertie Carvel) was having an affair with a much younger woman.
An epic battle, centred around their beleaguered young son Tom, then unfolded.
Scripted as before by the highly regarded British playwright Mike Bartlett, the new series is set two years later in the sleepy (fictional) English town of Parminster.
Jones, who first found fame as Karen McDonald in Coronation
Street from 2000 to 2004, outlines Gemma’s mindset at the start of the second season.
“On the surface, she has got her life back together,” Jones says. “She’s very busy as she’s now head of the GP surgery. She’s still got her friends around her, like Ros and her neighbours across the road. She and Tom are very close and very happy.”
But then, out of the blue, Simon returns to Parminster with his new wife and baby and, before you can say “revenge is a dish best eaten cold”, he mounts a fiendish plot to destroy Gemma’s life. Jones, who has also starred in
Scott & Bailey, observes that Simon’s reappearance unleashes the dark side of Gemma that she thought she had reined in.
“I think Gemma would like to think she is in a position to allow herself to move on,” the actress says, “and for him to move on, as long as they have separate lives and they don’t have to deal with each other.
“So when she sees him, every ounce of upset, torment and hatred comes flooding back. She can’t control herself again and she hates that.”
The great thing about Bartlett’s writing is that it is deliciously unpredictable. Just when the characters seem to be pottering along happily, they are hit by a blow they never saw coming.
Carvel muses that, “The first series tapped into an unease that many people can relate to – the idea of being cheated on. Series two will resonate with anyone who’s ever been deeply hurt in a relationship and tried to move on.
“I hope there will be a similar emotional appeal as there was with series one. Doctor Foster is a brilliant study of the way power shifts inside relationships.”
Carvel, 40, says Doctor Foster was originally billed as ‘the BBC’s new medical drama’.
“People would have tuned in expecting to see a medical show, but what they actually got was a dark psychological thriller.
“Mike is very clever at writing stories that people think are about one thing but actually explore something quite different.”
Bartlett reveals what viewers can expect from season two.
“Hopefully, it’s got all the unexpected twists and unpredictable emotional turns that people enjoyed in series one, but while telling a new story about these characters.
“It’s sexier, I think, perhaps darker, and more emotionally complicated. We also take Gemma to a place I don’t think she would ever imagine she would get to.”