I got hooked on the five-part BBC drama Doctor Foster within minutes. It's beautifully shot and acted; Suranne Jones is mesmerising as GP Gemma Foster, who discovers that her husband of 14 years has been cheating on her. With a 23-year-old. For two years. It's a very simple story which in many ways is banal, but the quality of the acting, and especially the central character, sets it apart.
On Wednesday the final episode aired and I found myself indulging all my least sophisticated knee-jerk emotional reactions, shouting very rude things at all the various characters who have hurt Gemma: her husband, Simon, who has cheated, lied, and shows no remorse when he is found out; Simon's girlfriend, Kate, whose disgust for Gemma makes her easy to hate; Gemma's so-called friends who had known about the affair for months and even socialised with the adulterous pair, saying nothing to Gemma.
It is only in the final episode that Gemma lets on that she knows about Simon's affair. She manoeuvres herself and Simon into an impromptu dinner at Kate's parents' house, enjoying the fact that Simon is uncomfortably aware of his two lives colliding. This is particularly worrying for him, as Kate's parents do not know their daughter is having an affair with a married man at least 15 years her senior, and Kate's father has been secretly funding his precarious property development project. Gemma's comments during the dinner become increasingly inappropriate, until she finally lobs the grenade, telling the whole room about the affair with relish, and with predictably catastrophic effect. Kate slaps her in a fury; Kate's father screams for Gemma to get out of the house; Simon sits there paralysed. He finally has to choose: will he go with Kate, who has stormed out, or with Gemma, who has been thrown out? He chooses Kate, and Gemma goes home alone to their son.
This is all highly enjoyable: Gemma has been badly wronged and it seems right that those who have wronged her be shamed, insulted and made to face up to their crimes against her. But even while shouting at the TV I was uncomfortably aware that, even though her behaviour might be in some way just, it isn't wise. It is an orgy of self-destruction in which she takes so many people down with her. The moment when she stands outside Kate's parents' house alone, watching her husband drive away with his pregnant lover, is a moment of real desolation. Despite everything, she loves her husband, and he has chosen someone else over her. Despite all her righteous anger, she has still lost the battle. And she has hurt innocent people along with the guilty: Kate's parents, who are nice people; they probably needed to know the truth, but not like that. Kate's teenage brother, who has to hear his sister's sex life discussed in lurid terms. And her neighbours, whom she visits after the disastrous dinner party, in order to throw another grenade. Gemma tells the wife, a friend of hers, that she has slept with her husband. An act of adultery Gemma committed after she learned the truth about Simon's affair, because if he has done it to her, why shouldn't she do it to him, and to another wife?
I'm an emotional person, and quite a jealous one: goodness knows how much grace I would show in a similar situation. But as Gemma allowed her pain to explode out of her in such a devastating way I thought of Jesus' command to love our enemies. It's not just, it's not fair, and I know from experience of forgiving far less serious wrongs that it's not easy. But it is the better path.
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