Channel 5 has become the go-to channel for enjoyably absurd thrillers. But even by its over-the-top standards, The Serial Killer’s Wife was off-puttingly ridiculous.
The series is adapted from a pot-boiler novel by Alice Hunter and arrived on terrestrial television after streaming on Paramount + for the past year – during which time it has failed to create much of a splash. It was easy to see why it has stayed off the radar. It featured a cast of thoroughly dislikable characters being awful to one another – to say nothing of behaving in a manner no rational human ever would.
Beth (Annabel Scholey) was the glamorous wife of dapper doctor Tom (Jack Farthing). They had a dream life together in a picturesque seaside town in Kent – until a birthday party for her husband was interrupted when the police arrived and arrested him for the murder of his assistant.
Tom’s loyal spouse was flabbergasted – though the fact that the police were hunting a killer can hardly have come as a surprise. After all, it was Beth who had found the missing Kate’s body on the beach while out jogging. She was horrified to stumble upon the corpse, though not to the point where it dissuaded her from throwing a birthday bash for her husband’s 40th a few days later.
Everyone seemed astonished that Tom could be accused of wrong-doing. But I had already seen straight through him. He had a sleazy aura and the sort of slick, Byronic haircut exclusively sported by cads in cheap thrillers.
Beth was as stunned as anyone else as he was carted off. She was equally aghast to discover that the dead assistant had been sacked by Tom and was suing him for unfair dismissal.
She had other woes, too, such as the reappearance of her cash-scrounging hippy mother, Clover (Julie Graham). Beth was also getting evil glares from fellow mums on the school run – a turn of events that appeared to upset her even more than her husband being hauled off by the cops.
Scholey worked hard at making Beth feel like a plausible protagonist. But she was up against a preposterous script. For instance, the morning after her husband’s arrest, Beth was still keen on joining a friend for tennis even though the same pal (Morgana Robinson) had videoed Tom’s detention and then plastered it all over the internet. She claimed she wanted to highlight police brutality. Beth, rather than losing her cool as any normal person would, just went with it.
There was also a strange final twist at the end of the first episode, in which Beth discovered Tom’s hidden phone, which had a video of him having rough sex with a woman who looked like the murdered Katie.
Again, she was astonished at this turn of events, despite having already watched that previous video of Tom doing the same thing with another woman. She knew her husband was a full-time love rat. Was she surprised he’d been having an affair with his assistant? Even if he was, did that make him a murderer?
But it was during an extended flashback shortly before the final credits that The Serial Killer’s Wife got properly ludicrous. A younger Beth was in a swanky nightclub when Tom caught her eye. Just like that, they were off for a quickie in the loos. They were eventually joined by another woman who stroked Tom’s arm as he and Beth went at it.
The scene was shot in the ultra-luxuriant style of a Magnum advert – I half-expected Tom to whip out a chocolate ice cream before it was all over. The goal was presumably to make their amorous life look decadent and dangerous. In fact, it was just laugh-out-loud hilarious – a note this silly caper struck far too often.
‘The Serial Killer’s Wife’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on Channel 5
