bbewnylorac Review of Doctor Foster: A Woman Scorned

Doctor Foster: A Woman Scorned (2015–2017)

Over-rated and schlocky

[6/10 · 10 December 2016]

I don't understand why people praise this series so highly. Yeah, sure, it's nice sugar to eat for a while, but then it makes you ill. It reminds me very much of 'At Home With the Braithwaites', a hit series years ago about a family that copes badly after they win an obscene amount of money in the lottery. You take a respectable middle class family, then drop them in an extreme situation that they can't handle. Soon the characters turn into cartoon figures and the plot becomes ridiculous. And similar to 'Braithwaites', 'Doctor Foster' started out as a classy and realistic series, but it soon reverted to schlock and cheap tricks to keep us interested. Suranne Jones is certainly chic and expressive in the title role, as Dr Gemma Foster, but the ridiculous melodrama she goes through is worthy of a bad pantomime. And after discovering that her husband Simon (Bertie Carvel) has cheated on her many times with many women, she doesn't do what most normal people would -- confront him, call him a piece of trash, leave him, then get herself a good lawyer. Instead, she waits what seems like an eternity, i.e. about five episodes, to silently grieve, break the law, enlist dodgy friends to spy for her, go mad, try to drown herself, devise revenge schemes and do everything except the logical things. She even cheats on her husband with one of his friends, solely to elicit information about Simon's finances. And she is supposed to be an intelligent physician and pillar of the community? Sorry, I just don't buy it. While it was initially refreshing to see a doctor as a flawed human being, and Jones is great at conveying the myriad emotions of a cheated-on wife, the ensuing schlock was ultimately just annoying. The production values are great, the pacing is fine and the setting in a picturesque village is appealing. Maybe if the writers had shown a little less sensationalism, this would have been a great series.