\u2605\u2605\u00bd<\/strong>
Prime Video, from September 15<\/strong><\/p>\n
Weeks before its premiere, Amazon Prime Video\u2019s new British thriller Wilderness<\/em> was already stoking online headlines. The interest was less in the show itself, and more in its use of Taylor Swift\u2019s re-recorded version of Look What You Made Me Do<\/em>, her hit 2017 single, which serves as the show\u2019s theme song.<\/p>\n After watching the whole series, nothing\u2019s changed: the best part of Wilderness<\/em> is its opening credits, an animated sequence paired to Swift\u2019s Reputation<\/em>-era smash, a spiky revenge track built on theatrical histrionics and aggrieved fury, where Swift reclaimed her victimised narrative from pop culture\u2019s clutches. For a show about a jilted wife turning the tables on her cheating husband, Wilderness<\/em> could\u2019ve used a lot more of Reputation<\/em>-era Taylor\u2019s scorched earth spark.<\/p>\n The not-so-happy couple: Will (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and Liv (Jenna Coleman).<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Amazon Prime Video<\/cite><\/p>\n Based on the novel by Welsh writer B.E. Jones and created by burgeoning British screenwriter Marnie Dickens, Wilderness<\/em> deposits us in the internal confusion of Liv Taylor (Jenna Coleman), trophy wife to affluent Will (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). The seemingly perfect British newlyweds (he\u2019s listed under \u201cMy Will\u201d in her phone) have moved to New York after Will got headhunted to run the events team at a luxury hotel, which means Liv has had to put her journalism career on hold. She\u2019s willing enough to sacrifice for her man and dives into her wifely duties at home, while also trying to write a novel in her spare time.<\/p>\n Until the day their fantasy life implodes after Liv finds explicit messages from a female co-worker on Will\u2019s phone. The series does a fascinating job of painting a jilted lover\u2019s obsession \u2013 Liv stalks Will\u2019s devices, masochistically curious for ever more details (explicit photos, sex videos, etc) that will do nothing but drive her madder. She confronts him over the affair, he admits it, and she gives him the Lisa \u201cLeft Eye\u201d Lopes treatment, throwing him out of the house and setting fire to his clothes.<\/p>\n Grovelling, Will returns with tickets to Liv\u2019s \u201ctrip of a lifetime\u201d, her dream road trip through the US desert, in a last-ditch bid to salvage their marriage. She agrees to go but, unbeknownst to Will, harbours plans of leaving him in a ditch somewhere, the US wilderness offering many opportunities for a \u201chappy accident\u201d along the way. On the trip, they meet an American couple (Ashley Benson and Eric Balfour) who get caught up in the pair\u2019s nonsense.<\/p>\n Liv is a confounding character, less sociopathic mastermind like Amy Dunne in Gone Girl<\/em> (Wilderness<\/em>\u2032 clear forebear) and more wet-rag blowing in the wind. One second she\u2019s a \u201950s femme fatale, plotting her vengeance with barely contained malice; the next she\u2019s casually agreeing to Will\u2019s idea they, like, have a baby. You\u2019ll find yourself tapping on the TV screen halfway through each episode like, \u201cOi c\u2019mon, kill the guy already!\u201d<\/p>\n That Liv desires to both hurt and help Will might seem contradictory, but there\u2019s a Freudian tilt to her indecisiveness. She\u2019s scared of becoming her mother Caryl (Claire Rushbrook), who\u2019s bitter and obsessed by the fact her husband left her for a younger woman when Liv was a child (it was Liv who spotted her father\u2019s indiscretions, which Caryl still resents).<\/p>\n Amid the maelstrom, Liv\u2019s also getting closer to her lesbian neighbour Ash (Morgana Van Peebles), who\u2019s a feminine counterpoint \u2013 supportive, affectionate, passionate \u2013 to Will\u2019s toxic masculinity. (Let\u2019s just ignore that one of the show\u2019s two minority characters seems to have no inner life apart from being a crutch for Liv\u2019s self-involved development, shall we?)<\/p>\n But for all its spicy setups, Wilderness<\/em> feels a slog. It\u2019s not campy enough to be fun, not furious enough to be satisfying, and not probing enough to offer any sensitive insight into why someone would stay with such a duplicitous jerk as Will. The early episodes, told in frequent flashbacks, also foil the show\u2019s forward momentum, which is annoying when its only strength is the twisty plot.<\/p>\n There\u2019s something intriguing in the show\u2019s use of music: Liv\u2019s at her most confident and strongest when she\u2019s wearing her headphones, a nod to pop\u2019s power and to the original novel\u2019s appendix, which includes a fun playlist titled \u201cMusic to Murder Your Husband By\u201d.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not till the series\u2019 closing minute that it finally bares its teeth, with Liv delivering a monologue spitting with female frustration: of gross men and their entitlements, of patriarchal inequity and its double standards, of a feminine rage unsatiated.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n