Close to Me
Adapted from the 2017 novel by Amanda Reynolds, this intriguing six-part psychological thriller hooks you in immediately and keeps you guessing right up to the last frame.
It opens with wife and mother Jo (Danish actor Connie Nielsen) lying at the bottom of the stairs in her wellappointed house, bleeding from a head wound. Waking up later in hospital with husband Rob (Christopher Eccleston) by her side, she finds that she remembers nothing of the past year. The doctors say her memory may return gradually and send her home to recuperate.
As Jo tries to settle back into her life, she begins to have flashbacks which suggest that perhaps her marriage was not as happy as it appears to be. Her uneasiness increases when it becomes clear that Rob is withholding vital information from her – such as the fact that her beloved father Fred (Henning
Jensen) is now in a home suffering with dementia. She discovers also that she hadn’t spoken to her best friend Cathy (Susan Lynch) for months and that her relationship with her grown-up children Sash (Rosy McEwen) and Finn (Tom Taylor) was rocky.
Is she as nice a person as she thought she was? Is she being gaslighted? And, crucially, did she fall or was she pushed? It is all elegantly dealt with in Angela Pell’s polished screenplay which deftly interleaves the thriller elements with an exploration of complex family dynamics.