Deep Water, review: This cliched drama is enough to make the heart sink

The new Lake District-set series starring Anna Friel is filled with the kinds of clunkers that bring you out of the lakes and back to the channel changer

Ed Cumming
Wednesday 14 August 2019 13:08 BST
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Anna Friel stars as Lisa, whose catastrophic lapse in judgment has disastrous consequences in the first episode
Anna Friel stars as Lisa, whose catastrophic lapse in judgment has disastrous consequences in the first episode

Soon after Channel 4’s I Am…, the series of standalone films about three women struggling with men, money and family, comes Deep Water, ITV’s six-part drama about three women struggling with men, money and family. Clearly, austerity is wreaking havoc with the imaginations of TV commissioners. Deep Water at least has better scenery. The title is obliged by convention to be a lame pun, so the characters get into metaphorical deep water, but also the events unfold in Windermere, in the Lake District. In the cold open, a child falls into a lake. How else will the title be manipulated? Perhaps the characters will reveal hidden depths. The source novels, by Paula Daly, were simply called Windermere. Much better than this deep cliche, which at times is enough to make the heart sink.

Kate (Rosalind Eleazar), Roz (Sinead Keenan) and Lisa (Anna Friel) are three friends living the small-town dream: driving through rolling green hills, worrying if their children have enough possessions, and shagging each other’s husbands. The women are clearly delineated so that the viewer doesn’t get confused. Roz is the poor blonde one, a struggling physiotherapist with a charming but useless partner Winston (Charlie Carrick) who brings home saxophones instead of money. In the first episode bailiffs take her fridge. Sax won’t pay the bills, but sex might, if she accepts the indecent proposal made to her by Scott Elias (Gerald Kyd). It’s the same as the plot of I Am… Kirsty, albeit in marginally less grotty surroundings.

Kate is the rich one, with a big house on the lake where she hosts dinner parties she refers to as “kitchen suppers", like David Cameron, in case we couldn’t tell she was a clanging Tory. She has an aggressive sister and ghastly children, one of whom appears with an eyepatch, in case we couldn’t tell he was a wrong’un.

Auburn-haired Lisa is not as rich as Kate and not as poor as Roz but suffers from a boorish husband Joe (Steven Cree) and the odd catastrophic lapse in judgment, with disastrous consequences in the first episode. Pity the poor make-up artist charged with frumpifying Friel, who could make repairing a dry stone wall look like the Victoria’s Secret show.

The three leads do their best. It’s not their fault the script is littered with the kinds of clunkers that bring you out of the lakes and back to the channel changer. “What kind of mother are you?” “We both know how damaging a divorce is for the children.” “You can stand up, I’m not going to manipulate you.” “She doesn’t fulfil my needs.” There are visual cliches, too, like the scene where a woman goes prying around someone else’s bathroom, rooting through cupboards and trying on perfume. Also, not to sound all Fathers For Justice, but I’m increasingly tired of TV where men are all dreadful and women must bravely battle through their failings, which is surely as reductive as the alternative.

The obvious comparison piece for Deep Water is Big Little Lies, the American HBO series starring Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, which proved the school gates could be a fertile backdrop for a thriller. But that’s set on California’s Pacific coast. It makes Windermere look like a paddling pool.

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