Doctor Foster signs off with slice of melodrama as high as ripe cheddar
SO she didn’t kill Simon, not in that way at least. She didn’t run over him in her trusty Prius, she didn’t knock him off the pavement in a fit of rage, she didn’t embellish the centre seam of his jacket with the perfect imprint of her roaring front wheel.
Instead, she demolished her ex-husband by stealth; picking apart the lies of his new life, planting the bulb of doubt in the furrow of his young wife’s brow, leaving him with nothing but the clothes he stood in and the cracked husk of the opulent, successful existence he had prized above all.
Was it worth it, Simon? Are you happy now, Gemma?
Don’t answer at once. We’ve had quite enough of you both. And so has your son.
Last night’s finale of Doctor Foster (BBC1) crept forward, minute by dreadtinged minute, towards the most melancholy of endings.
There stood Gemma (Suranne Jones) at the door of her Parminster villa, clutching at the sleeves of another of her dismal grey jumpers, pleading for her runaway teenage son to come home.
Fifteen-year-old Tom (Tom Taylor) had scarpered months ago, worn out by his warring parents and their ceaseless battle for supremacy on the post- divorce moral high ground.
Each of them had weaponised him for their own selfish ends, in ways that were awful to behold. Dad gave him alcohol at a party – and also had him witness his terrifying, botched suicide attempt on a busy dual carriageway.
Mum spied on him, stalked him and seemed to think it was no biggie to sleep with his teacher – now his face is on a missing poster.
Poor Tom was the pawn in a game that nobody could win, the little human shield peppered with the shrapnel of his parents’ endless booming ordnance.
He was a war-torn, sad reminder that while divorce is a runway that enables parents to take flight and escape each other, the bewildered children of divorce often crash and burn, unable to cope with the implosion of family life. At one point last night, no one in this blighted nuclear family even had a home to call their own.
By the time the three Fosters had their last supper together in the grim dining room of what appeared to be the local Travelodge, everyone’s emotions were as battered as the onion rings.
We finally found out what monstrous Simon (Bertie Carvel) had told Tom to make his son leave his mother and move in with him and new, young wife Kate (Jodie Comer).
It was that Gemma, in the grip of post-natal depression, had once wished that baby Tom was dead. ‘You said it and you meant it,’ said Tom, brainwashed by his father in the name of petty point-scoring, may God rot his twisted soul.
Tom also complained that Gemma seemed to prefer working at the health centre to spending time with him, unaware that it was she and not feckless Simon who was the main family breadwinner. What!! Doctor Foster wasn’t going to let that nasty medicine slip down without a fight.
‘The only way that I have failed you is in my choice of your father,’ she replied evenly. Hey waitress, another round of drinks and some more of that lovely garlic bread over here, said no one.
This was an intense ending to an intense series, with a stark depiction of the corrosive effects of divorce and obsession at its dark heart.
There have been doubters who have claimed that this second outing for Doctor Foster has been too melodramatic and yes, there certainly were a few ripe moments of high cheddar.
Characters stormed around shouting things such as: ‘You will never see your child again!’ Or: ‘I will stab myself.’ And even: ‘Your biggest fear is nothing compared to this.’
Simon and Gemma’s hate-sex in episode three was fifty shades of big pants bleak, while weirdness abounded on Gemma’s odd night on the Parminster lash.
Whether knocking back shots or failing to minister to the sick (her poor patients), we are reminded that she is a powerful, independent woman whose superpowers include turning raw chicken into a hot dinner in three minutes flat and – everyone in Parminster seems to agree on this – being great in bed.
AKEY scene involving Simon and the homemade – nitric-acid-dissolved – wedding-ring syringes (don’t ask) was only saved from high farce by Bertie Carvel’s superior acting skills.
Indeed, it is thanks to him that Simon was the utterly hateful husband from hell; whether being cocky or weak, cruel or crueller, he never failed to convince.
With nothing left to lose, he even managed to convince himself that getting back with Gemma would be a good idea. However, could even the miraculous Doctor Foster heal the gaping wound at the centre of her own family life? After all, she was just as guilty as her husband in failing their son.
Tom was the unfortunate receptacle for all the pain and agony in Doctor Foster, his little face paler and more troubled every week.
He hated himself, he told his mother. And his belief that his parents’ lives would be better off without him was the most heartbreaking thing of all.
Divorce does terrible things to couples like the Fosters, who lose sight of what is important. Tom’s father was only using him to get at his mother, while she was too wrapped up in her complicated revenge strategy to notice his anxiety.
Both parents say they only want what is best for Tom, while manoeuvring to get the best for themselves.
Will the poor little mite ever dare to come home to Parminster again? We’ll have to wait for series three to find out.