'Apple Tree Yard' BBC1

[jean]

Is anyone watching?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I saw the first episode up to the rape scene - I hadn't particularly been impressed up to that point (do people really behave like that?! - even if they do, I'm not interested unless the characters involved have something more appealing to go for them) and I don't have any wish to see rape presented - and certainly not in this sort of context (as a plot device to add "interest" to an otherwise indifferent drama). So I haven't bothered with it since.

[pastoralguy]

We've been watching it and have enjoyed it although Mrs. PG found the rape scene difficult. ( I thought the fading in and out made the point without being overly gratuitous). I think the point is that the Emily Watson character is acting totally against her normal behaviour and she's finding it both frightening and exhilarating. There are a few odd aspects in as much as she seems oddly incurious about her lover's name.

According to the Radio Times blurb there's an unexpected 'sting in the tail'. Can't wait.

[jean]

I'm finding it quite disturbing, but I have to find out what happens now.

What puzzles me is why the partner in a situation very like that of Erica Jong's heroine seems to care about her so much. I'd have expected him to disappear at that point. Will it turn out that it was he who set up the rape?

.

[cloughie]

I'm finding it quite disturbing, but I have to find out what happens now.

What puzzles me is why the partner in the [Edited] seems to care about her so much. I'd have expected him to disappear at that point. Will it turn out that it was he who set up the rape?

Mrs C doesn't like the series - too violent - so I'll have two episodes to watch after this evening - so don't tell me what happens!

[pastoralguy]

Very interesting developments! Well worth watching.

[Conchis]

Just watched the first episode on i-player and I'm hooked! :)

[pastoralguy]

Very good ending.

[jean]

Very well done throughout, I though.

But I was not entirely convinced by the ending - when can we talk about that?

[pastoralguy]

Very well done throughout, I though.

But I was not entirely convinced by the ending - when can we talk about that?

I wondered about that too!

[pastoralguy]

SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT KEEP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW HOW IT ENDS,!!!

That should do it.

So she DID ask Costley to kill her rapist. The twist, for me, was she wasn't as important a scientist as she had led Costley, and therefore us, to believe she was.

[jean]

I thought the twist was that she did ask him - but that she wasn't serious (she laughed as she said it) And the fact that he misinterpreted her showed that he really did have a 'high-functioning personality disorder'.

But I didn't believe that if she was as distressed by the rape and the stalking as we fully believed she was, she would not have joked in that way. The thought of Henry II would have stopped her in her tracks. And I think if we'd seen her say it at the point in th narrative when it happened,it would have jarred.

[jean]

Some reviewers think she really did mean it when she asked Costley to kill her rapist. But if that were the case, why was she surprised when he did?

Some think his telling his counsel of their affair really was the betrayal it seemed, rather than absolved by the explanation he gave in the final scene.