This slick, stylised and to be honest, highly improbable four-part BBC thriller nevertheless kept my wife and I intrigued and excited all the way through. Highly reminiscent of the kind of glossy thriller Hollywood might have churned out in the 80's starring a Michael Douglas or Sharon Stone, it centred on an immaculate, high-tech London town-house available for rent but only to the absolutely right tenant. It's owned by a wealthy, successful but reclusive architect who rigorously vets applicants by setting them extensive personal new-age style questionnaires to complete, sets draconian rules to live by and who even conducts a final person interview process before giving them the nod or, given the place has been empty for some three years, more often, a shake of the head.
As we join the action, the story diverges into two separate timelines as we see firstly a young mixed-race couple and then a single black woman separately make it through all the owner's hoops and jumps to finally graduate to picking up the keys, or in this case, bracelet-passes to the swish new property which has every mod-con going including mood lighting and music, sensory-operated showers but, as we discover later, pretty much zero security. More than this though, both the owner and indeed the house itself, have dark secrets which the narrative teases out as both timelines, one present-day for the single girl and the other three years ago for the couple, end up in explosively dramatic conclusions.
It's fair to say that the other lead character in this drama is the house itself, both inside and out. Personally I'm something of a gadget-fiend myself so the idea of a fully automated property has always appealed to me but giving it a HAL-like personality has to be a mistake as we all know where that usually ends up.
After taking a little while to work out the intersecting stories and indeed separate out the two young women who, essentially for the narrative, closely resemble one another, this was a dark tale of obsession and control. I'm not sure I agreed with the domination and manipulation of two obviously emotionally damaged young women by a mysterious but superficially attractive male figure nor was I impressed by the relatively unsympathetic police treatment of a rape victim, but nevertheless my wife and I soon fell into step with with the intricately-plotted double mystery.
Strongly acted by all the principals and atmospherically directed, what it lacked in political correctness and credibility, it made up in vicarious thrills and chills.
