The Stranger, Netflix
Life’s ability to destroy us just when we think things are going swimmingly is the central theme of The Stranger.
Things are looking perfect for Adam Price. He’s in a loving relationship with his wife Corrine, they have two healthy and happy boys, he’s a successful lawyer and she’s a star teacher.
They’ve worked together to build everything they have and then a stranger walks in and blows it all apart.
The stranger (actually two women) are a blackmail outfit who also believe there is a moral purpose to the exposure of lies.
The lie which tears Adam’s life apart is that his wife Corrine faked a pregnancy and a miscarriage a few years before. The stranger (Hannah John-Kaman) also suggests to Adam that he should check the DNA of his two sons to make sure they are his.
Corrine (Dervla Kirwan) partially admits the miscarriage lie when confronted by Adam (Richard Armitage) but completely denies his sons have a different father, saying she will explain later and “there is more to this.”
Then she disappears, texting Adam that she needs a few days on her own to think. We later learn that Corrine, who was the treasurer of her son’s local football team, may have taken money from the club funds.
There are other victims of the stranger. An extortion attempt on a mother whose daughter is working as an escort and on a man whose son’s use of performance enhancing drugs is the secret of his sporting success.
There is no shortage of subplots. Police are investigating after a boy was found naked and seriously injured following a forest party and a mile away an alpaca’s head was found in a field.
While in his work life Adam is attempting to defend the right of a man to remain living in the last house in an inner city terraced street listed for demolition. As life would have it, the rich and arrogant developer is Adam’s estranged father.
Then there’s the strange involvement of a killer cop on the investigating team.
There are some excellent performances here. Dervla Kirwan is good, Richard Armitage plays the anxious father perfectly, the always watchable Siobhan Finneran (Benidorm) is perfect as detective sergeant Johanna Griffin and it’s fantastic to see Stephen Rea back on our screen as retired detective and development refusenik, Martin Killane.
It’s been available since the start of the month so many of you will have binged watched it already, but if not perhaps it’s time to get prepared for the inevitable water-cooler chat because The Stranger is a smash.
****
Election 2020, RTE, Sunday and Monday.
There are two television events which set Ireland apart.
The first is the Late Late Toy Show, a programme about kids for big kids, which has topped the most watched lists for as long as I can remember and secondly there’s the election count show.
It’s often been described as Ireland’s Superbowl. The show everyone is watching and some people will take the day off work for.
Why so? It seems to be a combination of the Republic’s drawn out single-transferable vote system, the multi-seat constituencies, the parish pump nature of Irish politics, our cultural affinity with political parties, the drama of winners and the losers and good old tradition.
Where else would you get Danny Healy-Rae saying “to hell with the planet” in an anti-climate action victory speech?
Some of the famous psephologists may no longer be with us, but RTE still did a sterling job on the most important of any day in their public service remit.
