How Doctor Foster ruined British television drama
Visits to the GP aren’t usually the stuff of pulse-quickening excitement (though I suppose it depends on your practitioner). However, for five weeks in the autumn of 2015, more than 10million of us couldn’t wait for our weekly appointment with a certain female doctor. Mike Bartlett’s drama series Doctor Foster – in which Suranne Jones’s eponymous GP unravels spectacularly after she suspects her husband of having an affair – was larger than life, melodramatic, overheated and absolutely wonderful. The performances were big, the designer kitchens bigger; it was outlandish and ridiculous; a rich, moreish weeknight treat.
Bartlett pulled off a neat trick, sneaking past the BBC schedulers what was effectively a Bodencatalogue adaptation of Medea (minus the filicide – though only just). Terrestrial TV had a big, sexy hit. Water coolers buzzed. Was he having an affair or was she losing her mind? Was he a love-rat or was she paranoid? Whose side were you on? This year, Bartlett will revisit the Doctor Foster “universe” with a new BBC series, Life, in which Victoria Hamilton will reprise her character, Anna, the kindly neighbour who we saw depart the drama after Gemma Foster slept with her husband. I should be excited, but I have a bone to pick with Bartlett.
Doctor Foster has almost ruined British TV drama. The BBC and ITV have never quite recovered from its success, leaning far too heavily over the past few years on an array of third-rate knock-offs, all of which traded Bartlett’s bravura for bombast.
We are now lumbered with a primetime landscape that is saturated with hard-boiled dialogue, implausible plot twists, comically over-egged “tough women”, revenge and schlock.
One of the earliest offenders was ITV’s Liar in 2017, which returns for a second salacious series tomorrow night. Joanne Froggatt’s teacher wakes up the night after a date with Ioan Gruffudd’s charming doctor, suspecting that she has been raped. The Foster DNA ran through it. Arch performances; big kitchens; a heady atmosphere of melodrama and betrayal. He said. She said. Did he rape her or was she losing her mind? Was he a serial sex offender or was she paranoid? Whose side were you on? ITV warmed to the theme, with
Trauma in 2018 (did Adrian Lester’s suave surgeon do everything he could to save the life of John Simm’s son, or was he at fault for his death? Was Simm’s sad-sack father just paranoid? Whose side were you on?) and Cheat in 2019 (did Molly Windsor’s cocky student cheat on her dissertation or is Katherine Kelly’s academic being unjust? Was she just paranoid? Whose side were you on?). Both started promisingly, but collapsed into knifepoint kidnapping, murder, dead cats and lavatory-based masturbation.
Trauma was a particularly disappointing Foster copy, given that it was written by Bartlett (imitating Bartlett, who was imitating Euripides). He had already proved how difficult an act he was to follow with his second series of Doctor Foster, which tried and failed to be Doctor Foster.
The BBC piled in too, with its most obvious counterfeit Foster being The
Replacement in 2017. In it, Morven Christie begins to suspect that her maternity cover (Vicky McClure on full-beam) is trying to steal her job, then her life. Altogether now: was she just paranoid? Whose side were you on? My, what an enormous kitchen.
Since Doctor Foster, the lurid melodrama has been stubbornly back in fashion, with shows from the risible
Bancroft to the appalling Hard Sun being stuffed with po-faced dialogue, eye-rolling twists and Joey-from
Friends melodramatic acting.
The fault here isn’t necessarily with the writers, but with the nervous executives in uncertain times. However, when talented writers are given creative freedom the rewards are enormous. You get Jack Thorne’s National Treasure; Sally Wainwright’s
Last Tango in Halifax; Peter Bowker’s The A Word; Russell T Davies’s A Very
English Scandal; Joe Barton’s Giri/
Haji. And, yes, Mike Bartlett’s Doctor
Foster. A terrific show, but its influence has been deadening. It’s time the doctor was out.
‘Prime-time drama is lumbered with hard-boiled dialogue, implausible plot twists, revenge and schlock’