THE GIRL BEFORE

Neon, from today

As the property agent rightly points out, 1 Folgate St is “not your typical London onebed.” So brutally architectural it would leave Kevin from Grand Designs lost for words, so militantly minimal it would make even Marie Kondo a bit uncomfortable, you better believe the city’s hipsters are lining up for a chance to live there.

It’s not just the polished concrete and lack of handrail on the stairs that make the house at the centre of fourpart psychological thriller The Girl Before an unusual rental. The rules imposed by the landlord, who also happens to be the architect, extend beyond the usual no pets, no parties to a list of “about 200” prohibited activities. On the other hand, the rent is surprisingly cheap because the house is run by a state-of-the-art computer system that monitors and collects data from the tenants around the clock.

No alarm bells and no red flags for trendy young couple Simon and Emma (Ben Hardy and Jessica Plummer), to whom the landlord offers the lease despite having coffee spilled all over his architectural drawings by the klutzy Emma. They move in, fit all their stuff into the one allotted cupboard, then throw a big party in an apparent attempt to see how many of the house rules they can break in one go.

Meanwhile, in another timeline, another prospective tenant — who it must be said bears quite a resemblance to Emma — is jumping through all the same hoops. Jane (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the perfect tenant — single, tidy, would never let a child touch the house’s single decorative tree — so much so that the landlord asks her out on a date.

This and the many other revelations that follow walk a thin line between the intriguing and the unbelievable. If you keep your brain in a low enough gear, that line can feel like a very enjoyable sweet spot.