Good information for followers of luxurious wallpaper and Nicole Kidman, as a result of The Undoing (Monday, 9pm, Sky Atlantic) has each in spades. Firstly, the wallpaper: acres of it, in lofty-ceilinged flats; duck-egg blue with golden lineaments, or linen hung many years in the past by grasp craftsmen, or simply an alcove lined with refined candystripes main all the way down to a ripe mahogany ground. There may be extra to The Undoing than gazing adoringly at Wasp-ish inside design, sure, but it surely’s such a giant a part of the present you watched Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen will watch it alone to unwind.
The Undoing is the most recent Gone Woman, in that it’s a book-club thriller a couple of couple who’re very rich however then disintegrate due to a secret, and it has been optioned for an A-list-starring, gray color palette-having movie or miniseries. Kidman performs Grace Sachs, a high-flying New York psychologist with a rich father (Donald Sutherland), a charmingly brilliant son (Noah Jupe, whose path to the A-list is so assured I can already see him on the Graham Norton present in 15 years’ time, watching politely in a tuxedo whereas Graham replays previous clips of this actual present, laughing at how younger he seems), and a attractive Hugh Grant-shaped husband (performed by, clearly, Hugh Grant). All the things appears superb for 40 to 45 minutes after which somebody will get accused of homicide and life as we knew it thus far is gone, blah blah blah.
Factor is, it’s meant to be this unnerving story about what occurs when your world falls out from underneath you; the way it feels to kick your legs in water whenever you thought you had been on agency land. But additionally, very often, it’s nearly the way it’s fairly good to be old-money wealthy in New York; the vampish glamour of untouchable wealth. Grace’s NYC isn’t the NYC of steam popping out of the sewers and getting flashed on the subway; it’s a New York of enjoying a grand piano in an in any other case empty room, smoking a single cigarette on a balcony overlooking Central Park, of “having a driver”. One of many areas for all of the thriller and intrigue is an esteemed personal college, and infrequently it actually does simply really feel like everybody in Gossip Woman aged 40 years and somebody obtained killed.
I devoured it up, although, as a result of it’s so … plush. For one thing I’m virtually legally sure to name a thriller, it isn’t wildly thrilling (I predicted three complete plot pivots, which is an astonishing get for a person who has by no means as soon as referred to as the killer in a single episode of CSI, and that features some repeats of episodes I’ve already seen), however that quickly stops being the purpose. As an alternative, The Undoing turns into a narrative of unravelling, of school-gate gossip (the author, David E Kelley, brings that very same premium contact from Big Little Lies over to this), of watching a closeup of Kidman’s astonishingly poreless pores and skin as she tries very laborious to not cry.
It clanks right here and there – the courtroom scenes are, and I do know I’m not a lawyer so I can’t truly say this, deeply unprofessional – and the present suffers from meaningfulitis, the place each look and interplay and this-person-actually-knows-something-they’re-not-saying trace is clanged over your head like a beautiful copper pan. However whenever you’re watching Nicole Kidman stroll round New York in a giant, costly scarf, do you actually truly care? I’m telling you proper now: you gained’t.
