SummaryAfter the sudden death of Alison Wilson's (Ruth Wilson, playing her own real-life grandmother) husband Alec (Iain Glen), she is confronted by a woman ((Elizabeth Rider) claiming to be the real Mrs. Wilson in this miniseries inspired by Ruth Wilson's family history.
SummaryAfter the sudden death of Alison Wilson's (Ruth Wilson, playing her own real-life grandmother) husband Alec (Iain Glen), she is confronted by a woman ((Elizabeth Rider) claiming to be the real Mrs. Wilson in this miniseries inspired by Ruth Wilson's family history.
While Alison’s perspective is grounded in deep and often agonizing emotions, the limited series doesn’t approach its storytelling with rancor or judgment. Instead, it gives justice to the women he lied to and allows them to retcon the deception and pain into something bigger.
Ms. Wilson delivers an Emmy-worthy performance that’s equal measures vulnerable and determined as Alison seeks the truth of her husband’s infidelities.
Anna Symon's compelling script adroitly structures Alison's investigation across three hour-long parts, managing to render each additional betrayal even more shocking and painful than the last. ... This is Wilson's acting triumph, having lived through her grandparents' saga when her father and his brothers discovered the truth in the early 2000s, but other actresses gleam as well.
Heavy on drama but light on action, the piece methodically deconstructs a widow’s reckoning of her late husband when all of his deceit comes crashing down around her after he’s gone.
It’s tricky to dramatize what is essentially a series of conversations between two people where one is always outraged and overwhelmed, but Wilson does a good job of embodying a woman fueled by both anger and confusion, especially in the first episode when she is also hiding in denial.
The strangeness of the story, and Ruth Wilson’s characteristic intensity, pull us along. But Alison and Alec, and their motivations, never seem to come completely into focus.