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The saying goes that there is no anger in this world that can compare to a woman who has been scorned. I do not wholly believe in this adage. Broadly speaking, a furious rage is birthed from a person faced with any sort of friction, especially a man, towards reaching their goal. I understand this does not sound the same, nor has much likelihood at bolstering the patriarchy, so I shall not advocate for its use in the service of mere truth. But! This thought puts the tale crafted with righteous rage in women in a grimmer yet captivating light.
Moving on, we have Wilderness, which is based on the BE Jones’ thriller of the same title. The six-episode adaptation was done by Marnie Dickens, and it features Jenna Coleman and Oliver Jackson-Cohen as a couple named Liv and Will Taylor. The newlyweds do not get to enjoy their marriage for long, and here’s why. Soon after moving to New York with her husband, Liv finds out that Will has been cheating on her. He has been sleeping with a woman named Cara (Ashley Benson) for quite some time. After the initial shock of the affair wears off and Will books an amazing trip through the US parks that Liv has always wanted to take, she decides that she wants to throw him off the Grand Canyon. Will and Cara’s video gets shown to the audience before Liv attempts to kill Will, so everyone will know that Liv was not just being paranoid and that there is a valid reason for wanting to murder him.
Wilderness offers no room for nuances; the concept has no bottom or end. Rather, the oldest form of entertainment, revenge and catharsis, is what fuels this work. Obviously, the former has to be thwarted first, and that is the case for Liv. Another tourist interrupts her at the Grand Canyon, and as a result, she can’t break his head in on the hike because of the incriminating splatter. When they go whitewater rafting, she attempts to sabotage his equipment and he ends up saving her from the deep. Liv, at this point, decides to reconsider marriage. Perhaps the chase, or living well is the better form of revenge? Then all of a sudden, she overhears him speaking to Cara on the phone and makes the conclusion that, no, the murder that is made to look like an accident is most certainly the one to beat.
Underneath the happenings, there are many analogical digital communications about the oppression of women and the conditioning of girls and women to fake satisfaction regardless of how terrible reality is. Liv’s childhood was marked with lip smiles as she endured her parents’ combative marriage and her father’s infidelities. Caryl, her mother (Claire Rushbrook), has yet to accept the situation she’s currently stalking her ex-husband and his new partner online (I can’t believe she’s wearing a two piece! After all those kids!), and Liv is determined to not make the same mistake. Many would encourage going to therapy, but that would make this a very different show.
No, it’s either murder or nothing for Liv. In episode two, she has a fateful run-in with Cara and her new boyfriend Garth (Eric Balfour) in the woods, along with a budding friendship between the two women. Liv has to navigate through all the obstacles that fate throws her way, including a supposed chance encounter with Cara. Cara’s full-bodied acceptance of the forms of femininity’s debilitating rules evokes a pity in Liv that is quite frankly unwanted and suggests that the show might take a turn and transform into some kind of joint revenge buddy movie. By the end of these two episodes available for review, that outcome seems unlikely yet I will choose to hold on to hope that those girls emancipate themselves of their female restraints and ride off into the sunset in comfortable shoes.
The entire package is impressive and good looking and they executed this through the right strategy since each element of the show is convincing and the script is more than satisfactory. Dickens excels in writing intricate dialogues filled with compliments and insults that are given by frenemies towards each other. The outright passive aggression displayed by Caryl toward her daughter is amazing. Although, of course, it is not amazing for Liv. Coleman, as always, is brilliant. I hope she has a long career like Suranne Jones. Jackson–Cohen is great, too, and so is Dickens, even if she fails to ensure that our second chance at rooting for her character Will isn’t alongside a complete scoundrel. He is just shy of that. So we will wait for his inevitable betrayal of Liv. Once again.
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