Wilderness Review: A starkly inert, tiresome marital thriller

2/5

Story: Liv (Jenna Coleman) and Will (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) seem to be the quintessential, picture postcard young, happy couple, impossibly in love, leading a glamorous life in New York. However, when Liv learns Will has cheated on her, she crumbles. Will suggests a trip in an attempt for a fresh start to their marriage and in the hopes of regaining Liv’s faith. However, he is oblivious to the dangers that lie ahead.

Review: Perhaps, the most frustrating thing about the Marnie Dickens-created show is its attitude to female rage or more precisely, the ways in which it verbally articulates it. In its very projection of the female lead as exceptional, dictating life on her own terms rather than being consigned to victimhood, the show underlines it in the dull, declamatory voiceover by Coleman. Repeatedly, we are reminded how the show revels in its female protagonist, her need to break out of old patterns of exploitative behaviour at the hands of her husband, and her insistence she will not retread her mother’s mistakes. “Do better, you can’t be stuck”, this seems to be pretty much the refrain binding the episodes.

I haven’t read the 2019 bestseller by B.E. Jones, from which the show is adapted, but the narrative is essentially yet another uninspired addition to the chart-topping romantic psychological thriller genre. There is a cheeky twang with which the show begins, a promise of delicious, amusing pulpiness but then it does not commit to it. It teems with problems, ranging from the sheer laboriousness of its comments on relationships between men and women to just the way it views female revenge and forgiveness. Predictably, revenge is conflated with agency, retribution a repossession of one’s dignity and trust that the other has betrayed. Liv left Wales, following her husband for his professional relocation to America, abandoning her own job. She says she is working on a novel and therefore assuaging herself that she does have at least some preoccupation, beyond attending to Will. But she has only very much devolved into the archetypal devoted wife, willingly chucking her novel at the beck and call of her husband. She has based her entire life around him. Being with him, she feels she could be herself, after years of pretending to be someone else. Her mother, Caryl (Claire Rushbrook) warns her to keep some share of scepticism about her marriage always handy, insisting she must not repose all trust in her husband utterly and blindly. As a child, Liv had walked in on her father cheating; the childhood trauma and how her father’s infidelity impacted her relationship with her mother crucially factor into Liv’s perception of her vigilance regarding marriage and faith. So when Liv does discover her husband’s unfaithfulness, the effect on her is seismic, especially owing to the added baggage of her mother’s cautionary reminders against being eaten up by regret. She cannot afford to be stuck as her mother was, watching another woman have the life she was supposed to have with her own husband.

As much as the show wishes to examine gender roles vis a vis for the marital framework, the intent is steadily offset by the meandering police procedural that sets in soon. Will proposes a trip to Arizona as a way of mending the trust in their marriage. After some reluctance, she accepts it. Unknown to Will, Liv has more going on in her mind when they embark on the trip. Her plans are laid to disarray as Will’s colleague, Cara (Ashley Benson) shows up at the same hiking spot on the trip, with her husband, Garth (Eric Balfour). To divulge more would border on spoilers as the sections involving the tensions between the two married couples, Will-Liv and Garth-Cara, form the only riveting bits of the show, Coleman’s sprucing up her character’s dry snideness offering scraps of delight.

However, the middling suspense is further deflated as the central heroine is beleaguered and tortured by guilt and her inability to forgive. The scope for sharp thrills is supplanted by angst-ridden contemplation on morality, with Liv questioning her deeds and spiralling, even as her husband requests her to keep faith while springing even more unpleasant truths. Director So Yong Kim cannot resist planting full-throttle vicious fights and heated confrontation scenes every now and then yet the narrative remains leaden, any space for bitter, incisive energy constantly dulled by its distinctively annoying holier-than-thou voiceover. There is also an unnecessary, easily disposable track involving a queer neighbour who is a little too friendly with Liv. Coleman and Jackson-Cohen are eminently watchable but are tasked with essaying characters that seem strapped to insufferable orbits of writing that show no eagerness to go beyond the underlined and literal. There’s little inner depth that Coleman gets to play with since all of Liv’s motivations and anxieties are spelt out. Nevertheless, Jackson-Cohen brings nuance and complexity to a man who cannot quite stick to his promises, while managing to retain an air of sincerity that also allows itself to be read as gaslighting.

It's never a good sign when a show feels incumbent to hose down the viewer’s throat how it wants them to perceive its characters and their flawed decisions. This particular tendency of the show yanked me out of it and never got me back on track, as it kept straying mindlessly onto a bunch of characters who hardly leave any impression. Even the early glimmers of promise in the bilious unease are soon nowhere to be found.

Verdict: Wilderness quickly spirals into a yawnathon. The intrigue peters out after things are set up for a massive boiling point. The undeniable allure in broken, betrayed people committing horrific things, alienating sympathies while demanding centre stage-everything pales, not to mention the severely misjudged length of six overstretched hour-long episodes. It’s punishing to get to the end line in this show. Wilderness is wholly undone by its misguided notion of narrative tension and thematic duplicity that taper wildly off directorial control early on. This shallow, plodding thriller takes itself way too seriously for its own good.