A tremendous performance from Joanne Froggatt saves ITV’s new six-part drama about a woman caught in a violent marriage from drifting into absurdity
The best drama about domestic violence against women I’ve ever seen was Lucy Gannon’s Trip Trap in 1996. It starred Kevin Whately, normally seen as the soft and bumbling Lewis but cast brilliantly against type as the abusive husband, and Stella Gonet as his literally and metaphorically broken wife. By “best”, of course, I mean the most harrowing, the most relentlessly accurate and granular in its detail of the brutalisation such a relationship involves, the most effective at evoking the extent of the fear suffusing the victim’s world. A quarter of a century on, it’s still an inescapable touchstone when I brace myself for another fictional foray into this particular horror.
And the forays are numerous. Not as numerous as those that centre on the murder of a woman, but domestic (or intimate partner) violence (or spousal abuse, or battered wives – the terms change but they are always needed) remains a fertile field for investigation. Or exploitation, depending on the quality and intelligence of the product.