An 'excruciating' erotic thriller
This miniseries is Netflix's latest attempt to draw in subscribers with steamy melodrama. But its tale of a man's affair with his son's girlfriend is flaccid, writes Neil Armstrong.There is a dialogue-free scene in Obsession that is likely to excite some comment. Can you guess from its closed captions alone what is happening? "Groans softly." "Unsettling music playing." "Unsettling music intensifies." "Sniffing. Grunting." "Moans softly." "Gasps." "Exhales sharply." "Gasps." "Unsettling music continues." "Inhales deeply. Grunts." "Belt buckle clinking." "Sobbing." More like this: – The 12 best TV show to watch in April – How Basic Instinct killed the erotic thriller – Why Hollywood is shunning sex Yes, that's right. A well-groomed, middle-aged chap, having checked into the hotel room vacated by his young lover, proceeds to writhe on the bed, hungrily sniffing the sheets and pillows, seemingly unaware that it is the practice in hotels, especially in fancy Parisian establishments, to change the bedding in between guests. He eventually apparently locates some vestige of her scent in a cushion and it sends him into a frenzy of masturbation and – I'm sorry but there's no other way to describe this – bed-humping. From "Groans softly" to "Sobbing", the scene lasts a little over two minutes although watching it you might feel as though aeons are ticking slowly by. And if it's excruciating to watch, imagine how it must have felt to act. However, we mustn't make fun. William Farrow (Richard Armitage) is in the grip of a destructive obsession – there was a clue in the title – and has been since he first clapped eyes on femme fatale Anna Barton in this four-part erotic thriller, which follows the recently-cancelled Sex/Life as Netflix's latest attempt to draw subscribers in with steamy melodrama. Farrow is a brilliant surgeon. In the opening scene we are introduced to him successfully performing a complicated operation to separate conjoined twins. Afterwards, he and his barrister wife Ingrid (Indira Varma) drive to her father's huge place in the country, where the very close Farrow family – William, Ingrid and their son Jay (Rish Shah) and daughter Sally (Sonera Angel) – spend a lot of time. It's the sort of place that has a tower, a large gravel drive and a grand, bifurcated staircase so we know they're a well-to-do bunch. William, you see, is a man who has it all: loving family, money, a satisfying high-powered career. Everyone at this family gathering is keen to know more about medical researcher Jay's latest girlfriend, Anna Barton (Charlie Murphy). No-one has yet met her. "There's no way I'm exposing her to you lot," he jokes. However, his father is about to expose quite a lot of himself to her. At the launch of a new government health initiative at the Palace of Westminster, William sees a beautiful young woman on the other side of the room. As screen tradition demands, the hubbub of the crowd momentarily falls away as their eyes lock. Wham – instant attraction! A coup de foudre. They both know it. She slinks up to him at the bar, and gazes at him, sexily. "Hello. I'm Anna. Anna Barton," she says, sexily. "I think he’s [Jay] worried about introducing us," says William. "Oh. Should he be?" Anna asks, sexily. William places an olive between her teeth – a totally normal thing for a man to do with his smitten son's girlfriend who he's only just met – and she eats it. Sexily. Before long, she's texted William her address and he's hot-footed it round to her swanky top-floor flat where they have urgent sex on a hard wooden floor. The apartment has a perfectly serviceable bed but couples in the grip of forbidden, elemental passion always prefer a hard, wooden floor. Soon they're secretly meeting regularly for urgent sex. Anna has a few rules though (there are always rules, aren't there?) "You wait for me to say when. You do not turn up uninvited. Nothing happens beyond these walls without my permission."But rules are made to be broken and that's exactly what William does when he follows Anna and Jay to the hotel in Paris where they've gone for a weekend. Although Anna is very annoyed that William has transgressed, she nips out for a quickie with him in the back lane, right next to the bins. Ah, Paris. City of romance. Of course, the "erotic" is a very subjective concept but by now – and we're into the second episode here – some viewers might be feeling a little short-changed on this front. William and Anna don't even look as if they’re enjoying the sex that much. They go about it wearing grim expressions of dogged determination of the sort you might display when clearing the guttering. Bad news on the "thriller" element too, I'm afraid. The threat level appears relatively low. No bunnies need fear a boiling. The chances of murder and mayhem à la Basic Instinct are slim. Things perk up briefly when William receives a text from an unknown sender saying: "I know what you're doing. Stop Now. Pervert." He can't stop, tho
ChinaGoSmart CGS 
There is a dialogue-free scene in Obsession that is likely to excite some comment. Can you guess from its closed captions alone what is happening?
"Groans softly." "Unsettling music playing." "Unsettling music intensifies." "Sniffing. Grunting." "Moans softly." "Gasps." "Exhales sharply." "Gasps." "Unsettling music continues." "Inhales deeply. Grunts." "Belt buckle clinking." "Sobbing."
More like this:
– The 12 best TV show to watch in April
– How Basic Instinct killed the erotic thriller
– Why Hollywood is shunning sex
Yes, that's right. A well-groomed, middle-aged chap, having checked into the hotel room vacated by his young lover, proceeds to writhe on the bed, hungrily sniffing the sheets and pillows, seemingly unaware that it is the practice in hotels, especially in fancy Parisian establishments, to change the bedding in between guests. He eventually apparently locates some vestige of her scent in a cushion and it sends him into a frenzy of masturbation and – I'm sorry but there's no other way to describe this – bed-humping.
From "Groans softly" to "Sobbing", the scene lasts a little over two minutes although watching it you might feel as though aeons are ticking slowly by. And if it's excruciating to watch, imagine how it must have felt to act.
However, we mustn't make fun. William Farrow (Richard Armitage) is in the grip of a destructive obsession – there was a clue in the title – and has been since he first clapped eyes on femme fatale Anna Barton in this four-part erotic thriller, which follows the recently-cancelled Sex/Life as Netflix's latest attempt to draw subscribers in with steamy melodrama.
Farrow is a brilliant surgeon. In the opening scene we are introduced to him successfully performing a complicated operation to separate conjoined twins.
Afterwards, he and his barrister wife Ingrid (Indira Varma) drive to her father's huge place in the country, where the very close Farrow family – William, Ingrid and their son Jay (Rish Shah) and daughter Sally (Sonera Angel) – spend a lot of time. It's the sort of place that has a tower, a large gravel drive and a grand, bifurcated staircase so we know they're a well-to-do bunch. William, you see, is a man who has it all: loving family, money, a satisfying high-powered career.
Everyone at this family gathering is keen to know more about medical researcher Jay's latest girlfriend, Anna Barton (Charlie Murphy). No-one has yet met her. "There's no way I'm exposing her to you lot," he jokes. However, his father is about to expose quite a lot of himself to her.
At the launch of a new government health initiative at the Palace of Westminster, William sees a beautiful young woman on the other side of the room. As screen tradition demands, the hubbub of the crowd momentarily falls away as their eyes lock. Wham – instant attraction! A coup de foudre. They both know it.
She slinks up to him at the bar, and gazes at him, sexily. "Hello. I'm Anna. Anna Barton," she says, sexily. "I think he’s [Jay] worried about introducing us," says William. "Oh. Should he be?" Anna asks, sexily. William places an olive between her teeth – a totally normal thing for a man to do with his smitten son's girlfriend who he's only just met – and she eats it. Sexily.
Before long, she's texted William her address and he's hot-footed it round to her swanky top-floor flat where they have urgent sex on a hard wooden floor. The apartment has a perfectly serviceable bed but couples in the grip of forbidden, elemental passion always prefer a hard, wooden floor.
Soon they're secretly meeting regularly for urgent sex. Anna has a few rules though (there are always rules, aren't there?) "You wait for me to say when. You do not turn up uninvited. Nothing happens beyond these walls without my permission."
But rules are made to be broken and that's exactly what William does when he follows Anna and Jay to the hotel in Paris where they've gone for a weekend.
Although Anna is very annoyed that William has transgressed, she nips out for a quickie with him in the back lane, right next to the bins. Ah, Paris. City of romance.
Of course, the "erotic" is a very subjective concept but by now – and we're into the second episode here – some viewers might be feeling a little short-changed on this front. William and Anna don't even look as if they’re enjoying the sex that much. They go about it wearing grim expressions of dogged determination of the sort you might display when clearing the guttering.
Bad news on the "thriller" element too, I'm afraid. The threat level appears relatively low. No bunnies need fear a boiling. The chances of murder and mayhem à la Basic Instinct are slim. Things perk up briefly when William receives a text from an unknown sender saying: "I know what you're doing. Stop Now. Pervert." He can't stop, though, because he's Obsessed. But all too quickly, this flaccid plot strand is resolved, having failed to generate much dramatic tension.
The actors are doing their best with the material they've been given but the problem is that we just don't care about any of the characters. All we know of Anna is that she's a civil servant working for the Foreign Office and she studied politics at Leeds. She's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Whenever either Jay or William has the temerity to ask her anything about her life, she tells them they have to "learn to love the questions". Bit irritating.
(Credit: Netflix)
She doesn't seem to have any interests beyond writing pretentiously in her journal ("I am lost and then I am found… I have a sense of symmetry. That somehow I have conquered two sides of a mountain at the same time") and a bit of light BDSM. By the time we do learn about her past and why she is the way she is, we're absolutely bored to tears by her.
But we don't really know anything about William either. He's barely two-dimensional. His character description in a CliffsNotes for this show would read simply: "Successful surgeon. Likes olives and light BDSM." It’s hard to feel anything for either him or Anna.
The bestselling 1990 novella on which this is based – Damage by Josephine Hart, made into a 1992 film of the same name, starring Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche – is narrated by the William Farrow character so there we have access to, at least, his thoughts and feelings in a way that we simply don't here.
The eventual ending left me with a lot of questions, none of which was "Will there be a second season?" But if it also fails to get your juices flowing, don't despair. Although Nicholas Barber has argued on BBC Culture that the 1992 movie Basic Instinct represented both the apogee and the end of the erotic thriller, Obsession is merely the first thrust in a veritable orgy of upcoming productions trying to revive the genre. Among others, we can look forward to Fatal Attraction, which has been repurposed as a TV series and arrives on Paramount Plus at the end of this month, starring Lizzy Caplan and Joshua Jackson. Peacock is remaking the 1996 move Fear ("Fatal Attraction for teens," the original film's producer called it), while Apple TV+ has announced Presumed Innocent with Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Negga, adapted from the 1987 Scott Turow novel of the same name, which was previously filmed with Harrison Ford.
It looks as though, after a lengthy recovery period, the erotic thriller has lead in its pencil again. Let's hope, unlike Obsession, these other new shows are more "Moans softly" than "Exhales sharply".
★★☆☆☆
Obsession is released on Netflix internationally on 13 April
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