Yes, I do occasionally watch stuff on TV that isn't meant for kids and/or nerds. Mostly, though, I have to say, these trips into grown-up land remind me why I usually prefer TV shows for kids and nerds. The slowness and portentousness of "mature" TV can be a trial, and the payoffs resulting from the slow build-ups aren't always worth the wait.
The Undoing on HBO is a case in point. In some ways it reminded me of another six-part thriller relying heavily on relationship dynamics, Behind Her Eyes on Netflix. Admittedly, the ways they tackled the ending of the drama were very different. In Behind Her Eyes, there was a big twist based on a wacky premise, whereas in The Undoing, there - wasn't. But in both cases, the pace was glacial, and I was close to quitting at times. Perhaps writers of thriller series should consider putting a three-episode restraint on themselves. They'd have one episode for the set-up, one for the build-up and creating of tension and atmosphere, and one for the conclusion. That is quite enough. Now, in The Undoing, we basically get a whole episode about the female protagonist Grace Fraser freaking out because she can't reach her husband after a mother of a kid at their son's school is brutally murdered. I liked Nicole Kidman in Big Little Lies, but a little of her neurotic Grace goes a long way. It's no wonder the cops find both her husband and herself suspicious; she claims she hardly knew the victim while at the same time acting like a nervous wreck.
Much of the time spent on Grace's anxiety could have been cut without harming the tense atmosphere. And yet, it's not the build-up of this series that has been criticised as much as the ending. And yeah - it's not great. But then, thrillers like these have a tough job when it comes to pulling off the ending. Their viewers are mostly seasoned consumers of crime drama and fiction and very hard to surprise, let alone in a good way. The ending of Behind Her Eyes was surprising, but it did rely on that wacky premise I mentioned. The Undoing sticks to more realistic scenarios, but that means that whatever you come up with, some of the viewers (or readers - the series is based on a novel) will already have thought of it. There are only a handful of people that could have killed the luckless Elena Alves - I make it four or five at a pinch - if you discount roping in a stranger or a bit player like Grace's best friend as the killer. Like Ariadne Oliver in Agatha Christie's Cards on the Table, we in the audience can cheerfully suspect all of them, one after the other, thinking up the most likely scenario for the murder in each case, so when the truth is revealed we are unlikely to be blown away.
When disappointed viewers say that "any other ending" of The Undoing would have been better than the one we got, I'm not so sure. It wasn't satisfying as the solution of a mystery, certainly, but I can think of at least one ending that would have felt equally "meh", and in terms of fall-out for the characters that were not guilty of murder it could have been a lot worse. Not that you care desperately about them (and this is another problem with a lot of "grown-up" TV dramas). The ending, to my mind, felt flat, but it didn't feel insulting.
What bothered me rather more was a plot point where a tragedy in a character's past - and said character's reaction to it - is given undue weight when the reveal draws near. That the character in question shows "neither grief nor guilt" over what happened is seen as a grave point in their disfavour. But the tragedy wasn't the character's fault, and they still got blamed for it - in such circumstances, I would also have been wary of expressing any grief freely.
But the series has points in its favour too. Hugh Grant acts his socks off as Grace's husband Jonathan, who thinks he can charm his way out of any scrape (I preferred his disarmingly flippant moments to his emoting, but maybe that's partly the point). Donald Sutherland is badass as Grace's father, who as a bonus likes to hang out in front of the appealing paintings in the Frick Collection; Noah Jupe is affecting as the Frasers' precocious son, who has to watch his world fall apart; Mendoza the cop was cute, and I enjoyed the scenes with public defender Robert Adelman and super-expensive private lawyer Haley Fitzgerald respectively ("not feeling the vibe here, team" quips the latter when things are going especially poorly). It's to be expected: David E. Kelley, the script-writer, is an expert on courtroom drama.
All the same, if you're looking for a thriller that will have you murmuring "wow, that was clever", this isn't it. But then, how many thrillers are?
