WHICH ONE IS CRAZY?
It’s the BBC psycho-drama that’s torn the sympathies of millions between two (increasingly unhinged) warring career women. So, as The Replacement reaches its denouement . . .
THE Replacement is BBC1’s gripping psychological thriller starring Morven Christie as highly strung architect ellen and Vicky McClure as Paula, the temp who is covering her maternity leave and seems intent on stealing ellen’s whole life.
From the start, when ellen discovers she is pregnant, she is a brittle, hyper-sensitive woman with a history of psychiatric disorders, a controlling personality both at home and in the office. It takes the smallest thing to set her off.
But, as the old joke goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there’s no one out to get you. And every move Paula has made seems calculated to destroy ellen’s career, her reputation and her family.
Is Paula insanely jealous? Is ellen dangerously deluded? Here, before tomorrow’s climactic episode, we examine the clues and the crises . . .
THE INITIAL MOVE
AFTER Paula is hired to cover ellen’s leave at the Glasgow architects Gillies Warnock, she wastes no time establishing herself. Offering to work for free, months before ellen is due to leave, Paula obtains plans for ellen’s lavish library project directly from the firm’s boss, David (Dougray Scott).
Within days, she has introduced herself to the client, made an unannounced site visit and come up with improvements to the drawings. But when pregnant ellen tries to add a modification of her own — a skylight — Paula at first opposes it.
To ellen, who is reluctantly handing over her desk to a stand-in while she leaves to have her first baby, this appears manipulative and calculated. But when she warns Paula not to cut her out of memos and conversations, the response is plausible: ‘I honestly never meant to do that, I thought I was doing you a favour.’
And it has to be said that ellen is a self-confessed control freak who won’t even let her own husband attend crucial baby scans.
What does it mean? Looks as if ellen is overreacting badly. Crazy Rating: Ellen 4/10, Paula 2/10
TRYING TOO HARD
Paula seems desperate to be liked, sharing fashion tips with the girls in the office and arranging a spa day with the firm’s joint boss, Kay (David’s wife,
right). But it all seems too forced when she talks Kay and David into letting her cook Sunday dinner at their house . . . especially when she texts ellen’s husband, Ian, to invite them, too.
If anything, ellen isn’t paranoid enough about this. ‘How did she get your number anyway?’ she demands. ‘She’s got no business texting you. That’s weird!’ But Ian, a psychiatrist, offers no explanation. How many wives would let that go?
The lunch is an embarrassment, with Paula scolding ellen for eating brie (soft cheese carries a listeria risk for expectant mums), then claiming she had felt the baby’s first kick, despite ellen’s denials, as they hugged goodbye. So, is Paula crazy to be so eager for everyone’s approval?
What does it mean? ellen’s suspicions may have been well-placed all along. Crazy Rating: Ellen 3/10, Paula 7/10
CRACKING UP
AS Her due date looms, ellen is going to pieces. She thinks Paula wants to persuade her to leave for good, with talk of her being a stay-at-home mum for ten years. Her friends and family don’t help, joking about how the future holds nothing but children’s books and sleepless nights.
That leads to a stand-up confrontation, just after Paula has delivered a note-perfect presentation to the library client. Tempers get so frayed that the stand-in offers to resign on the spot — which ellen takes as a sign that Paula already reckons her position has become unassailable.
In floods of tears, ellen barges into boss Kay’s office and claims: ‘She wants me out so she can take over.’ Convinced their pregnant star is a victim of her own hormones, Kay and David order her to start her maternity leave early.
Things get worse when Paula and ellen make an
impromptu site visit. Ellen takes off her shoes so she can feel different floor tiles, but stumbles — and Paula is quick to report the accident, insisting that to ignore it would be unprofessional. Result: Ellen is suspended after it emerges she wasn’t supposed to be on site when she was heavily pregnant.
At every stage Paula can claim to be in the right, but still we sense that she is playing a devious game. Maybe it’s because actress Vicky McClure never seems to blink.
What does it mean? Maybe it’s all a figment of Ellen’s imagination after all. Crazy Rating: Ellen 6/10, Paula 4/10
MURDER SITE
HEAVily pregnant, Ellen receives a phone call from Kay, pleading with her to rush and meet her at the library site. But the combination lock has been changed and, when Ellen gets there, she can’t find her boss...until Kay plunges through the skylight to her death.
in the moment before Kay died, Ellen heard a clang above her. Was there another person on the roof? And Kay’s final words on the phone were suspicious: ‘Things have got really sh***y here, i finally know what’s been going on.’
Despite this, the police rule her death to be suicide. Based only on her hunches and intense dislike, Ellen decides Paula must be the murderer. Her suspicions increase after she follows Paula to Kay’s husband David’s house and finds Paula’s lipstick in his bathroom.
He admits that Kay thought he was having an affair. in Ellen’s feverish mind, this amounts to proof that Paula killed Kay to prevent her finding out about her ‘affair’ with David.
in vain, Ellen’s husband ian tries to convince his wife to see reason: ‘you don’t accuse someone of murder just because you don’t get on.’ So is Ellen crazy to denounce Paula as a cold-blooded killer? What does it mean? There’s no evidence that Paula killed Kay. Ellen is bordering on psychosis. Crazy Rating: Ellen 9/10, Paula 6/10
THE OTHER SOLUTION
WHAT if both women are sane, and all their suspicions about each other have been augmented by an outsider?
There’s Vernon (Gilly Gilchrist), the client for Ellen’s library project. He seemed to turn against Ellen when she revealed she was pregnant, and has now insisted on working only with Paula. But chief suspect has to be their creepy boss David, who likes group hugs with his female employees and makes inappropriate remarks about their appearance.
When Ellen challenges him, asking to see Kay’s phone to trace her movements before her death, David (right) reacts with alarming anger — he drags her upstairs shouting, then almost throws Kay’s possessions at her.
David appears to recover quickly from his wife’s death, even telling Ellen to use Kay’s office. Sometimes it’s the icy-calm people who are boiling mad on the inside. What does it mean? Though both women acted oddly, perhaps they’re sane and the boss is crazy. Crazy Rating: Ellen 1/10, Paula 3/10 (and David 10/10)
Crazy totals: Ellen 30/60: losing her grip. Paula 31/60: Dangerously deranged.