"Martha and Donny's toxic relationship is fascinating to watch in the same way that a car crash is, spiralling out to infect everything around it even as the show digs deeper into their backstories." The Evening Standard
Dark and uneasy, it takes you on an unexpected journey while bringing attention to themes of loneliness, mental illness, and abuse. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this as much as I did but I found myself watching episode after episode like watching a car crash in slow motion. This story is a pretty brutally raw crazily complex portrayal of how someone can be severely lonely, sad, and insecure.
The seven-part series by Richard Gadd follows Donny Dunn and his challenging relationship with Martha, a woman who becomes his stalker after meeting at the pub where he works. In the scene where Martha first enters the bar, I started to come up with ideas about the two main characters. I felt how their mental wounds were scabbed over. I also predicted how these wounds would bleed in the following episodes. That's why this series was worth watching for me from the first episode. In the series, the writer has revealed a man searching for his sexual identity, what a childhood trauma exposed to domestic violence in her childhood does to a woman in her forties, how important the support of parents is, and many other sensitive and valuable topics. Embarrassing topics were strewn across the table and laid bare for all to see in such raw, mesmerising details.
Some of Martha's moments reminded me of Annie, played by Kathy Bates, in the movie Misery (1990). Misery, in my opinion, is the greatest film adaptation to come out of Stephen King's horror oeuvre. And what can one say, Kathy Bates, she deserved the Oscar winner for this performance. If you haven't watched it yet, you've missed a lot.
Some points make you empathize with both main characters. I'm talking about the kind of empathy from which everyone will find something in themselves; dark impulses, cruel insistence, obsessions, mental confusion, loneliness, disorientation, search for identity, sins, mistakes, etc. For some people, this proximity can give them a headache. Perhaps you will be relieved that the series acts as a mirror.
Gripping, mind-opening, powerful, absorbing... An amazingly told story. I finished this in one day. I laughed, my eyes fill with tears, I was shocked. So glad the writer put a spotlight on an issue so often not talked about. Like a good book that you can't put down.
