A divorce support group decides to exact vengeance on their exes – with disturbing, even murderous, consequences
Adaptations of successful books are the staple diet of TV drama. If something has achieved best-seller status in paper form, it must automatically translate into a small screen hit. That’s the logic in a risk-averse commissioning environment.
The Revenge Club, adapted from JD Pennington’s best-selling debut novel The Othello Club, takes place in a contemporary Britain much like our own, but the way the people behave there feels decidedly unreal. And it’s ultimately what sees this cartoonish revenge caper coming unstuck.
It stars the brilliant Aimee-Ffion Edwards (Slow Horses) as Emily, a recently scorned woman who has just lost her husband and best friend in a single romantic betrayal. We go with her to a divorce support group where she meets a collection of similarly forlorn adults, adrift following their own spousal abandonments. But we first meet our heroine in a police interview room where, it becomes clear, she is being questioned over multiple unexplained deaths.
When we join the group in a grey, municipal room (in the TV standard “circle of chairs”), we’re introduced to a firmament of British acting talent including Meera Syal as downtrodden Rita, Martin Compston as handsome but troubled Calum, Sharon Rooney as deceptively cheerful Rachel and Douglas Henshall as ex-military man Steven.
Judging by their first moments together they’d be desperate to get away from each other, but we cut straight to a scene with them in the pub. It’s the first in a long list of examples where people act out of character to service the plot.
As they exchange embittered stories of how they came to be single over room temperature wine, we’re supposed to believe a collective sense of resentment eventually drives them to form a kind of scorned A-team where they take it in turns to avenge each other (one per episode), ruining the lives of the exes who left them.
“I hate to be the bubble burster, but we’re a pound-shop Ocean’s Eleven,” says Callum, teetering on the brink of quitting early on. The dialogue is often self-aware but this does nothing to paper over the giant cracks in the action.
In episode one, the gang, led by Henshall’s army strategist, design a wildly convoluted scheme to drive Emily’s ex-best friend from her new home. You can see what they’re going for, a kind of domestic Mission Impossible where the characters become suburban spies, bugging light fittings and causing mystery infestations to punish their traducers. It could be a big, broad romp, but all the basics of plot and characterisation are missing. Without solid foundations underneath, the whole thing wobbles.
The story hinges on a believable moral journey for each of them. Would this apparently law-abiding person really give up their free time to enact complicated schemes for people they hardly know? My disbelief wasn’t so much suspended as dangling dangerously from a worn thread attached to a very tall crane in a force-10.
The direction, though, led by Tim Kirkby, does save the implausible plotting on numerous occasions, giving the show a far more sophisticated feel than its thin narrative. This is also true of the performances, particularly by Edwards and Compston as they try to infuse Emily and Callum’s developing relationship with as much chemistry as possible while events continue to work against them.
The Revenge Club is an appealing idea. Which is why it’s such a shame that a group of wildly talented actors and a resourceful director have been set adrift by a weak overall vision. With this pedigree, I’d hoped to invest in the whole series. As it stands, I’m ditching it after one.
‘The Revenge Club’ is streaming on Paramount+
