It is obvious that Agatha envies Meghan, unaware that life inside her beautiful home is more complex than the view from over the fence. The narrative pivots between Meghan, who has two young children and a husband working in television, and Agatha (Laura Carmichael, from Downton Abbey), who is single and works at a local mini-supermarket. But when it comes to skeletons in the closet, the admission of an unintended child is nothing compared with the various kinds of jiggery-pokery and dangerous liaisons in store. The words are the beginning of a blogpost Meghan – a mummy blogger and social media influencer – is writing. Voiceover narration begins, telling the audience: “It’s time to let you in on a little secret, we didn’t plan to have another child.” The first episode opens moodily, with an image bathed in midnight blue depicting Meghan (Jessica De Gouw, recently in SBS’s sexting-themed drama The Hunting) and her husband Jack (Michael Dorman) lying in bed. Generally in a good, nail-biting way, rather than “get outta town, this is stretching plausibility” – though at times there is a faint element of that too. But might you find me blankly watching it, glass of wine in hand, after a long day in lockdown? Probably.The directors, Jennifer Leacey and Catherine Millar, pull off no easy feat, pushing viewers into a psychologically tense space where walls feel like they are closing in and the actions of certain characters become maddening. And it’s predictable: I have a pretty good idea what will happen next. But it’s poorly drawn: if Meghan makes a living as a ‘mumfluencer’, why do we never see her creating blog content? It fails to whip up much tension, whether it’s Aggie lurking in the bushes behind Meghan’s home or a child going missing in the supermarket. I’ll happily ingest hours of this sort of stuff – sometimes a schlocky thriller a few notches up from Neighbours is exactly what the doctor ordered. I don’t think he’s claiming great insights into the female mind, although he did ghostwrite Geri Halliwell’s memoir. ![]() The book’s author is one Michael Robotham. Woman desperate for a partner and a baby goes psycho. Couple in comfortable surroundings have their lives up-ended. Or should that be Single White Female? Or The Stranger? The Secrets She Keeps, based on a best-selling novel and with a title so generic it may have been assembled by a domestic-thriller word generator, feels wearily familiar. She’s become obsessed with Meghan from afar via the latter’s online posts, and things are about to get a little like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. But – spoiler alert – Agatha is a pathological liar wearing a fake belly. But her husband didn’t want another child – “This is our ‘oops’ baby,” says Meghan – and it may not be his anyway, if the awkwardness between Meghan and the husband’s best friend is anything to go by.Īt the supermarket, Meghan meets mousy shelf-stacker Agatha (Carmichael), who tells her that she’s pregnant too and due at the same time. It belongs to Meghan Shaughnessy (Jessica De Gouw), a blogger/social media influencer who appears to have a lovely life with her husband and two children and another baby on the way. Carmichael spent 90 per cent of Downton looking nervily unhappy and it certainly caught a casting director’s eye, because here she plays a nervily unhappy supermarket worker going to desperate lengths to have a baby. ![]() ![]() This time it’s The Secrets She Keeps (BBC One), an Australian import that unexpectedly stars Laura Carmichael, aka Lady Edith in Downton Abbey. Welcome to another series of Middle-Class Women with Marble-Topped Kitchen Islands.
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