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| This ‘feminist’ drama’s message? Woe betide the woman who strays | This ‘feminist’ drama’s message? Woe betide the woman who strays |
| (about 17 hours later) | |
| When the BBC series Apple Tree Yard began last month, I was a little dismissive. It seemed a bit silly to me, this affair between a supposedly high-flying scientist and a man she barely knew. Though lust can make fools of us all, surely there are limits. The lonely widow whose internet lover relieves her of her life savings is one thing. Quite another is the leading geneticist who has sex in a House of Commons broom cupboard with a bloke she will shortly decide is a spook on the sole grounds that he has a working understanding of security cameras. When this man of mystery later demanded, in a Westminster bar, that she hand over her knickers pronto, I laughed. Though not, admittedly, as loudly as I did when she went to the loo and obediently whipped them off. | When the BBC series Apple Tree Yard began last month, I was a little dismissive. It seemed a bit silly to me, this affair between a supposedly high-flying scientist and a man she barely knew. Though lust can make fools of us all, surely there are limits. The lonely widow whose internet lover relieves her of her life savings is one thing. Quite another is the leading geneticist who has sex in a House of Commons broom cupboard with a bloke she will shortly decide is a spook on the sole grounds that he has a working understanding of security cameras. When this man of mystery later demanded, in a Westminster bar, that she hand over her knickers pronto, I laughed. Though not, admittedly, as loudly as I did when she went to the loo and obediently whipped them off. |
| Still, I stuck with it, returning for episode two and then, in a rush for the finish line, consuming the final pair of episodes via a press preview site. “The thriller,” wrote Raymond Chandler, “is an extension of the fairytale. It is melodrama so embellished as to create the illusion that the story being told, however unlikely, could be true.” | Still, I stuck with it, returning for episode two and then, in a rush for the finish line, consuming the final pair of episodes via a press preview site. “The thriller,” wrote Raymond Chandler, “is an extension of the fairytale. It is melodrama so embellished as to create the illusion that the story being told, however unlikely, could be true.” |
| I didn’t feel that Apple Tree Yard could be true. I still don’t. Its flaws of psychology and slightly loopy plot seem to me mostly to negate its emotional authenticities. Nevertheless, it tugged at me. Partly, it was that I wanted to know what was going to happen. It is brilliantly suspenseful. But I also needed to work out why, with every episode that I watched, it made me more uneasy. The last time I experienced a similar sense of compulsive disquiet, it was 1987 and I was watching Fatal Attraction, another thriller in which an extramarital sexual relationship has, to put it mildly, grave repercussions for those involved. | I didn’t feel that Apple Tree Yard could be true. I still don’t. Its flaws of psychology and slightly loopy plot seem to me mostly to negate its emotional authenticities. Nevertheless, it tugged at me. Partly, it was that I wanted to know what was going to happen. It is brilliantly suspenseful. But I also needed to work out why, with every episode that I watched, it made me more uneasy. The last time I experienced a similar sense of compulsive disquiet, it was 1987 and I was watching Fatal Attraction, another thriller in which an extramarital sexual relationship has, to put it mildly, grave repercussions for those involved. |
| Before it began, Apple Tree Yard was sold to us quite emphatically as being on the side of women, and middle-aged women to boot, that species so often absent from our screens. It is based on a novel by a woman, Louise Doughty, its screenwriter, Amanda Coe, is a woman, and so, too, is its director, Jessica Hobbs. Its star, Emily Watson (who plays Yvonne Carmichael), spoke in interviews of how pleased she was to have landed such a strong role; the Radio Times described it excitedly as a drama that “celebrates female sexuality”. | Before it began, Apple Tree Yard was sold to us quite emphatically as being on the side of women, and middle-aged women to boot, that species so often absent from our screens. It is based on a novel by a woman, Louise Doughty, its screenwriter, Amanda Coe, is a woman, and so, too, is its director, Jessica Hobbs. Its star, Emily Watson (who plays Yvonne Carmichael), spoke in interviews of how pleased she was to have landed such a strong role; the Radio Times described it excitedly as a drama that “celebrates female sexuality”. |
| How bewildering, then, to find that, in reality, Carmichael’s unbridled fun with Mark Costley (a giveaway of a name that might have come straight from Dickens) lasted for all of 50 minutes, after which the party abruptly ended when she was savagely raped by a colleague. | How bewildering, then, to find that, in reality, Carmichael’s unbridled fun with Mark Costley (a giveaway of a name that might have come straight from Dickens) lasted for all of 50 minutes, after which the party abruptly ended when she was savagely raped by a colleague. |
| Was this her punishment? I pushed the thought from my mind. Don’t over-react, I thought. But then came episode two. Retribution now seemed to be around every corner, every kitchen counter. Her rapist was stalking her. Her husband was having an affair. Her adult son seemed to be suffering a reoccurrence of his mental illness. And she could not – or would not – report the rape, mostly because she feared the discovery of her relationship with Costley. Carmichael was portrayed as numb, barely able to function. | Was this her punishment? I pushed the thought from my mind. Don’t over-react, I thought. But then came episode two. Retribution now seemed to be around every corner, every kitchen counter. Her rapist was stalking her. Her husband was having an affair. Her adult son seemed to be suffering a reoccurrence of his mental illness. And she could not – or would not – report the rape, mostly because she feared the discovery of her relationship with Costley. Carmichael was portrayed as numb, barely able to function. |
| But she was not so numb that she didn’t agree to meet Costley at a “safe house” (for which read: an empty flat) where, after they’d had sex, she asked him to warn off her stalker. Her affair and her rape were now bound intimately together twice over. To be clear, one is not the cause of the other. But the affair is why she has kept the attack secret, and by asking Costley to frighten its perpetrator, it marks the beginning of what we know will be, for her, yet more toppling calamity (we’ve already flashed forward and seen her in a prison van). | But she was not so numb that she didn’t agree to meet Costley at a “safe house” (for which read: an empty flat) where, after they’d had sex, she asked him to warn off her stalker. Her affair and her rape were now bound intimately together twice over. To be clear, one is not the cause of the other. But the affair is why she has kept the attack secret, and by asking Costley to frighten its perpetrator, it marks the beginning of what we know will be, for her, yet more toppling calamity (we’ve already flashed forward and seen her in a prison van). |
| On Friday, a Daily Mail columnist who has also seen all four episodes praised Apple Tree Yard for its refusal “to pander to the popular modern fairytale that women can have endless sexual freedom without fear of repercussions”. On reading this, all my anxiety rose to the surface. (In her shoes, however, I might just have gone for broke and written “any” sexual freedom: after all, it is not suggested that Carmichael has had other affairs, and she has been with Gary, her husband, since university.) | On Friday, a Daily Mail columnist who has also seen all four episodes praised Apple Tree Yard for its refusal “to pander to the popular modern fairytale that women can have endless sexual freedom without fear of repercussions”. On reading this, all my anxiety rose to the surface. (In her shoes, however, I might just have gone for broke and written “any” sexual freedom: after all, it is not suggested that Carmichael has had other affairs, and she has been with Gary, her husband, since university.) |
| He is a presence, while she is only – or only feels herself to be – an absence | He is a presence, while she is only – or only feels herself to be – an absence |
| Though I don’t really know what “feminist-approved tropes” might be, I am struck by the series’ imagery. It is all darkness versus light. The gloom of the St James’s alley (the eponymous Apple Tree Yard) where Carmichael and her lover have sex is set against the sacred glow of her hearth and home; the pewter Thames that she and Costley sit beside in their lunch hour is in marked contrast to the bright glint of the glass in which her husband will later pour her wine. | Though I don’t really know what “feminist-approved tropes” might be, I am struck by the series’ imagery. It is all darkness versus light. The gloom of the St James’s alley (the eponymous Apple Tree Yard) where Carmichael and her lover have sex is set against the sacred glow of her hearth and home; the pewter Thames that she and Costley sit beside in their lunch hour is in marked contrast to the bright glint of the glass in which her husband will later pour her wine. |
| Her adult daughter is happily pregnant. Her husband is, by her own account, “a good man” and depicted as long suffering (in spite of his affair). Her house is spacious and comes with all those 21st-century ramparts that safely put distance between the middle classes and the world outside. Her universe is, in other words, replete with all the old certainties. Why, the question is implicitly asked, did she want to risk it by having in an affair? | Her adult daughter is happily pregnant. Her husband is, by her own account, “a good man” and depicted as long suffering (in spite of his affair). Her house is spacious and comes with all those 21st-century ramparts that safely put distance between the middle classes and the world outside. Her universe is, in other words, replete with all the old certainties. Why, the question is implicitly asked, did she want to risk it by having in an affair? |
| And here’s the rub. Why did she? In the end, what bothers me most about Apple Tree Yard is not its seemingly punitive atmosphere so much as Carmichael’s motivation, her delusion in the matter of Costley. This is difficult to write about because I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending for you (when it comes, it is exciting, unexpected). But right from the beginning, her obscure desire for him has seemed to me to be built on little more than her lack of self-esteem. | And here’s the rub. Why did she? In the end, what bothers me most about Apple Tree Yard is not its seemingly punitive atmosphere so much as Carmichael’s motivation, her delusion in the matter of Costley. This is difficult to write about because I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending for you (when it comes, it is exciting, unexpected). But right from the beginning, her obscure desire for him has seemed to me to be built on little more than her lack of self-esteem. |
| He is a presence, while she is only – or only feels herself to be – an absence. “You saw me,” she whispers in voiceover, more than once. If Apple Tree Yard is really saying that a woman’s faith in herself, even a clever, able, successful woman, is sometimes a faltering, unsteady thing, well, they’re hardly wrong. But I do think its makers might have found a slightly more subtle way to depict the harm this might cause her. The havoc here is biblical, a tumult of thunderbolts that strike as if from nowhere. | He is a presence, while she is only – or only feels herself to be – an absence. “You saw me,” she whispers in voiceover, more than once. If Apple Tree Yard is really saying that a woman’s faith in herself, even a clever, able, successful woman, is sometimes a faltering, unsteady thing, well, they’re hardly wrong. But I do think its makers might have found a slightly more subtle way to depict the harm this might cause her. The havoc here is biblical, a tumult of thunderbolts that strike as if from nowhere. |
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