Hell is other people. But a fortnight\u2019s summer holiday in a Greek island villa with three pals you have known since university, the young second wife of one of them, your depressive husband and the mulish French nanny the second wife has hired to look after her foul child, is surely the innermost circle of it.<\/p>\n
Such is the diabolical situation in which Zoe (Jessica Raine) finds herself in Two Weeks in August, an utterly convincing and wholly compelling \u2013 in an \u201cif somebody doesn\u2019t push at least three-quarters of these credibly appalling individuals into the sea soon then I will clamber through the screen and do it myself\u201d kind of way, which is the best kind of way \u2013 blackly comic drama exquisitely written by Catherine Shepherd, immaculately directed by Tom George and Matthew Moore and perfectly played by the whole cast.<\/p>\n
Zoe is a comprehensive school teacher managing life with more grace under pressure than most of us do. A natural carer and conciliator \u2013 other characters call her a people-pleaser, because this is always how the selfish view anyone who doesn\u2019t endlessly put their own needs first \u2013 she signed her family up for the trip partly because of, yes, friends\u2019 expectations, but also because a fortnight away in the sun sounded like a pleasure. A temporary escape from her job and her ageing, demanding mother, a change for her two children, and a little relief perhaps after supporting her husband, Dan (Damien Molony) through his recent battles, which are eventually revealed, in a brilliant climactic dinner table scene, to have been longer and harder \u2013 on both of them \u2013 than any of their friends knew. Of course her mother still calls every day, they can\u2019t afford the trip and Dan approaches it with his now-customary dourness (\u201cNothing fun ever happens when someone says \u2018It\u2019ll be fun!\u2019\u201d He is right, obviously, but he is wrong to say it to his valiant wife.)<\/p>\n
Feeling the strain \u2026 Jessica Raine and Damien Molony as Zoe and Dan.
Photograph: Various Artists Ltd\/BBC\/Robert Viglasky<\/p>\n
Making up the rest of the island gang are glamorous Nat (Leila Farzad) whose nose is put out of joint when the casual boyfriend of her gay best friend, Jacob (Hugh Skinner) turns up at the villa, not-quite-at-the-moment-working actor Solomon (Nicholas Pinnock) and the younger wife, Jess (Antonia Thomas) \u2013 she has bagged the best bedroom and avoids as much outlay of money or effort as she can, usually by exploiting Zoe. The mulish nanny is L\u00e9a (Florence Banks) and is at least openly lazy and parasitic. The rest insist on talking the talk \u2013 for example, about how concerned they are about the refugee crisis \u2013 without ever realising how far they are from even contemplating walking the walk. A standout moment comes in the second episode, when Jacob makes sure the owner of the boat they take out knows he works for a charity that \u201craises awareness of wealth inequality\u201d, which is so perfectly one and a half degrees away from being a charity of any use whatsoever that I will love this line for ever.<\/p>\n
Antonia Thomas as freeloader Jess. Photograph: Various Artists Limited\/BBC\/Colin Hutton<\/p>\n
Thus the stage is set for \u2013 everything. What follows, via such tried and tested dramatic devices (done so well here that they feel fresh) as infidelities, oversharings, ingestion of recreational drugs, tale-telling, boat-related mishaps, teenagers, scorpions, a fancy dress party at the palatial home of dreadful couple Flick and James (\u201cWe came here to tap into the creative energy and never left!\u201d) played with glee by Dolly Wells and Tom Goodman-Hill, is the story of \u2026 well. Zoe\u2019s unravelling? Zoe\u2019s liberation? Zoe\u2019s breakdown? Zoe\u2019s self-actualisation? Zoe\u2019s long-overdue losing of her shit so her friends and family might think twice before unthinkingly taking whatever they need from her every hour of the day? All of the above, and all delivered to us via an extraordinary performance from Raine, which lets us see and understand every moment of her journey and feel, in the end, that it could have gone no other way.<\/p>\n
Along the way, it delivers a touch of wry social commentary (in Jacob and his gen Z boyfriend\u2019s differing reactions to the infidelity, in the HR complaint raised against Nat at work) without breaking the mood. It even manages to fold in a mythological element that does exactly what it should \u2013 makes the story feel only more authentic, eternal, universal \u2013 instead of seeming like a jarring supernatural bolt-on.<\/p>\n
Two Weeks in August is in itself like a holiday \u2013 a holiday from dramas made up of meretricious moments and unearned payoffs, or which let the beautiful scenery instead of beautifully written scenes do the work. I feel restored after eight hours basking in its brilliance. In real life, of course, I shall keep my passport firmly unrenewed.<\/p>\n
Two Weeks in August is on iPlayer now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hell is other people. But a fortnight\u2019s summer holiday in a Greek island villa with three pals you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-457386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}