Thomas Benson’s sales pitch collapses in front of the client and his smirking rival Carter, played by Ben Miller, and the humiliation festers. Over the next three nights, the middle manager, portrayed by Ken Nwosu, becomes convinced that every corridor glance and printer jam is part of a plot to force him out. Mike Bartlett’s script, adapted from his own stage play Bull, keeps the viewpoint pinned to Thomas, so the audience shares his claustrophobic uncertainty about what is real and what is office politics.
Director Julia Ford shoots the open-plan office like a hunting ground: fluorescent lights buzz overhead, colleagues whisper behind glass, and the camera lingers on Thomas’s sweat-beaded temples. The 60-minute episodes leave no time for red herrings; instead, paranoia accelerates until a rooftop confrontation decides whether Thomas keeps his job or his sanity. Susannah Fielding as team leader Isobel and Alexandra Roach as Thomas’s wife Jess provide the only counterweights to the corporate pressure, but their loyalties stay ambiguous.
Critics were unmoved. Rotten Tomatoes tallied a 40% approval rating, with reviewers calling the drama “mundane melodrama” and complaining that the stakes never rose above a missed quarterly target. The Independent handed episode one two stars, The Telegraph three, yet the same critics conceded that Nwosu’s jittery performance made the humiliation watchable. ITV billed the show as event television, airing the trio of episodes across consecutive December nights in 2019, then quietly removed it from the schedule. No second series was commissioned.
Production Details
ITV1 / 1 Season / 3 Episodes / 2019
Created by: Mike Bartlett
Showrunner(s): Mike Bartlett, Catherine Oldfield
Writer(s): Mike Bartlett
Producer(s): Colin Wratten
Music: Jack Halama
Main Cast
Ken Nwosu as Thomas Benson
Ben Miller as Chris Carter
Susannah Fielding as Isobel Jones
Alexandra Roach as Jess Benson
Gwilym Lee as Mark Baxter
Daisy Boo Bradford as Millie Benson
Sean Sagar as Andy Stocks
Ritu Arya as Becky Mills
Debbie Chazen as Natalie
Phoebe Nicholls as Janice Lancing
Elena Saurel as Tanya Baxter
Michael Cochrane as Clayton
