Chloe - BBC One

[kernelbogey]

SPOILER ALERT - If you have not watched all six episodes of Chloe, you may want to turn away now... and not read further!

I intend starting a thread of its own for Chloe on Monday after the sixth and last episode has been broadcast.

Having binge-watched Eps 3-6 on iPlayer, after watching 1 & 2 'as iive', and then re-watching Ep 6, I'm interested to discuss the series with interested others here - WITH SUITABLE SPOILER ALERT.

This will appear (all being well) soon after 2200 on Monday next 21st.

kb

Comments invited on this much-hyped, much admired and much praised (eg The Guardian *****) Series.

Live the lie to find the truth. Outsider Becky obsesses over influencer Chloe – until tragedy pulls her in deeper than she ever dreamed possible. Thriller starring Erin Doherty.

[kernelbogey]

Chloe on BBC1 & iPlayer Just brilliant drama.

I was hooked from the first episode: I think by the dazzling performance by Erin Doherty in the lead role - sure-footed in the multi-faceted chracter at the centre of the drama.

She dazzled apparently, too - unseen by me - as Princess Anne in The Crown on Netflix.

[gradus]

Oh dear, it didn't work for me. Becky (Sharp?)/Sasha was by far the most interesting character but I thought the other characters unengaging and the plot verging on ludicrous.

[kernelbogey]

What inspired the idea of this thread was the combination of the hype, a 5* review and the beguiling perfomance of Erin Doherty as Becky/Sasha - all of which completely seduced me on viewing Eps 1 & 2.

But by the end I was in the same place as gradus (#3 above). The improbabilities stacked up. The film seemed in love with itself.

Much was made, in the press stuff and in reviews, of the importance of social media in the plot. For me, not a user of any social media, the screen shots of what I assume to have been forwarding/retweeting/reposting etc were incomprehensibe (as I assume they were not for the average milennial).

The Becky/Sasha duality held a certain kind of truth about any of us - but it did not appear that Becky learned anything about herself - and precious little about Chloe.

What a let-down.

[Serial_Apologist]

I was left wondering about the fortunes (in both senses!) of the Eliot Fairbourne character. Were the revelations hushed up by his apparently complicit election team, or would some intrepid whistle blower be onto the blower informing the Bristol Evening Post about him? There were earnest messages over the closing credits advising anyone affected by domestic abuse offering advisory contacts - but what, beyond flimsy emotional adolescent attachments, motivated the manipulative Becky to throw all self-caution to the winds? Are we not already overwhelmed with enough evidence of personal self-destructiveness in this country in the forms of political denial becoming commonplace? Wouldn't a drama based around that theme have been more helpful? what is this tale teaching us? One perhaps had hopes that Becky was doing us what would turn out to have been a favour, even though the initial attraction of the Fairbourne character seems to have mixed up the magnetism of wealth and sexuality with an obsession to find out the truth. Empowerment in any meaningful sense is surely not synonymous with women who throw themselves at men.

In the finality, did one care enough for Becky to wonder what would be the outcome of all this - all we see at the end is her and her ambivalent co-worker ensconced in their seaside portacabin hideyhole, the implication being that they would be able to "move on" and re-start their lives elsewhere. I had half wanted a rabbit out of hat ending in which Chloe turns up, having not actually committed suicide or been murdered, but absconded to an undisclosed rich lover in the Bahamas, who has now been bankrupted in a failed property investment scheme and is thought to be linked in with Russian oligarchs. But that would have necessitated a better, much longer plot.

[kernelbogey]

But that would have necessitated a better, much longer plot.

Yes, you are eloquent about what I think turned out to be its shallowness and narcissism as a film. I think the underlying notion of being able to spy on, and obsess about, 'beautiful people' (to use an outdated term) via social media was an interesting starting point; but it went nowhere. Becky seemed to learn nothing, and we learned nothing about her.

Erin D's acting was indeed wonderful: though I was left wondering whether the Becky personality could really have blagged her way through all that deception and not been found out earlier.