Olivia Colman and David Thewlis play Susan and Christopher Edwards, a retiring librarian and her obedient husband whose expat life in France collapses when a single phone call to Christopher’s stepmother resurrects the 1998 double murder they thought they had literally buried behind Susan’s childhood home. Across four brisk episodes, writer-creator Ed Sinclair and director Will Sharpe fracture the timeline: detectives Emma Lancing and Paul Wilkie pick at the couple’s contradictory statements in separate custody suites, while stylised flashbacks show how William and Patricia Wycherley bullied their daughter, hoarded her inheritance and met two bullets in the back bedroom. The camera keeps slipping into the black-and-white Westerns Susan adores until her fantasy life of gallant cowboys and spotless heroines bleeds into the police interview tapes.
Sharpe shoots Mansfield like a Sergio Leone town, all long shadows and whistling wind, yet refuses visual tricks for the 1980s youth scenes; Thewlis cheerfully admitted "we just put wigs on". Arthur Sharpe’s score undercuts the bleakness with jaunty woodwinds, while Erik Wilson’s wide frames make even the garden excavation feel oddly elegant. The series never disputes guilt; instead it asks what combination of emotional captivity, financial panic and shared delusion could make two polite, cash-strapped hoarders dig a 1.8-metre grave rather than walk away. Colman’s Susan, brittle and childlike, earns the final close-up: a woman who has rewritten history so often she can no longer tell which version the jury might believe.
Production Details
HBO / 1 Season / 4 Episodes / 2021
Created by: Ed Sinclair
Showrunner(s): Serena Thompson, Jane Featherstone, Ed Sinclair
Writer(s): Ed Sinclair, Will Sharpe
Producer(s): Katie Carpenter
Cinematography: Erik Wilson
Music: Arthur Sharpe
Main Cast
Olivia Colman as Susan Edwards
David Thewlis as Christopher Edwards
Dipo Ola as Douglas Hylton
Kate O'Flynn as DC Emma Lancing
Samuel Anderson as DC Paul Wilkie
Maanuv Thiara as DC MacBride
Daniel Rigby as DCI Tony Collier
Felicity Montagu as Patricia Wycherley
David Hayman as William Wycherley
Kathryn Hunter as Tabitha Edwards
Connie Kiss Mee as Young Susan
Nimisha Odedra as Sandra Winters
