Trust Me (2017) - Review
Starring: Jodie Whittaker, Emun Elliott, Sharon Small & Blake Harrison
Written By: Dan Sefton
Directed By: John Alexander & Amy Neil
Certificate: 15
I
want to begin this review with a confession. Yes, both myself and I
imagine a fair number of Trust Me's 5m-strong audience,
tuned in to watch this series partly due to Jodie Whittaker's
then-recently announced casting as the 13th Doctor in
Doctor Who. I'll talk a bit more about this later, but
I also wouldn't say it was my sole reason for sitting down and
watching the series. The promotional material did tease a series with
an intriguing and solid concept for a four-episode thriller, and so
it did enough to catch my attention. So how did this mini thriller
turn out overall?
Cath
Hardacre, a sister, loses her job following an act of whistleblowing,
exposing the poor conditions on the ward of the hospital where she
works. In need of a way to provide for her young daughter, Cath is
driven to extreme lengths. When her best friend, Dr. Alison Sutton,
emigrates to New Zealand, she assumes her identity and moves to a new
hospital in Edinburgh to start a new life. However, her lack of
advanced medical knowledge puts her and her patients at risk, and
each day becomes more of a challenge for her to avoid being found
out...
Before
I go any further, I just want to get the last Doctor Who
related stuff out of my system, as it isn't fair on Trust
Me for me to constantly go on about another show. Trust
Me was overshadowed quite a bit by Jodie Whittaker's casting
as the 13th Doctor the month beforehand. Even Cath's line
“Dad, I'm going to be a Doctor.” sent fans (including
myself) into a tizzy! But while we're talking about it, I just want
to briefly give my thoughts on that casting. I remember coming away
from the announcement video with a great big smile, and have since
spent weeks looking forward to what directions the show may take with
the new Doctor. It's another landmark moment in Doctor Who's
history. From what I've seen, the general reaction among fans has
been a positive, enthusiastic one and even introduced new people to
the show, but there are some of course understandably a little
hesitant at such a big change. I completely understand and sympathize
with anyone nervous about this change, because it isn't something
that's been done before, and if the writing team can't treat this as
something that feels likes a natural change, then we may have a
problem. But then you've also got a minority of unrestrained sexists
and bigots, whose brains seem so closed off and primitive that they
can't seem to comprehend the possibility of an alien being able to
switch genders. There's also a fair bit of shouting and screaming
coming from people who don't even watch or care about the show.
Honestly I can see no problem with Jodie Whittaker's casting –
she's a great actress and in interviews I've seen with her, she seems
bubbling with excitement for the show, and that kind of eagerness is
exactly what it could do with.
So
now that I've got the Doctor Who stuff out of the way,
this is probably a good time for me to confess that while I knew the
name Jodie Whittaker, aside from a single episode of Black
Mirror, I hadn't actually seen her in anything else at the
time. I've since put this right and started to catch up on
Broadchurch, and now we have Trust Me to
contend with. What I've seen and learnt from Jodie Whittaker is that
she's an actress with the ability to give very real and understated
performances. Both in Broadchurch and Trust Me,
she can bring to life characters that are both likeable and
sympathetic. In the case of Trust Me, that is a bigger
accomplishment than you may at first think. When it comes down to it,
we have a main character who's committing a very serious and immoral
crime that puts the people around her and the ill people that she has
to deal with a massive risk. Yet we still find ourselves rooting for
her and are in almost constant worry as to whether she'll be caught.
This
could well be the best thing about Trust Me – it's
easily one of the most nail-bitingly tense bits of TV I've seen in
quite a while. The moment Cath steps foot in that hospital in
Edinburgh, there's very little way of telling what's going to happen,
and it keeps you guessing and on the edge of your seat. It's
constantly unpredictable, and it can start to get claustrophobic with
the amount of dangers Cath starts to face from all angles. You've got
the fear that one of Cath's co-workers may twig that she's not a
qualified doctor, patients that she doesn't know how to treat and who
she risks causing serious damage to, a journalist and ex-husband that
know her real identity and end up following her to Edinburgh,
higher-ups constantly asking her for passport identification which
she doesn't have etc. etc. This is a series that when you're watching
it, it really feels like it might go in all sorts of directions. Yes,
as plenty of people feel compelled to point out, it has to stretch
plausibility every now and then for certain things to work, but to be
honest, the series never required me to suspend my disbelief any
further than I was willing to, so in this case, I didn't find that
too much of a problem.
(Skip
ahead now to the next paragraph to avoid spoilers!) Trust Me's
unpredictable nature meant that I was left guessing as to how it
could come to an end. Ultimately we'd either see Cath caught and
exposed as a fraud, or see her succeed and manage to pull it off.
Whilst the latter of these is the ending that they eventually go
with, it's still quite a brave ending to go with, and it's testament
to Jodie Whittaker's brilliance in the role, and Dan Sefton's
writing, that it works. The fact that Cath goes on working in the
hospital, with Andy in full knowledge of who she really is, and
basically gets her own happy ending, would not have worked if the
audience weren't invested in her. To close the series with your main
character committing a serious fraud crime, and still have it work
as a happy ending, takes an enormous amount of skill, and I applaud
the bravery of ending the series like that.
My
only complaint with the main story of Trust Me, is that
the set-up it requires feels very flimsy and undercooked. About the
first three quarters of Episode 1 are dedicated to showing Cath as a
sister and how she loses her job through whistleblowing. It's a solid
start and a decent introduction to Cath; however the explanation
behind what drives her to steal her friend's identity is sadly
lacking. The leap between Cath being out of work and going as far as
to commit identity fraud just feels too quick and unexplained. I
understand that she needs some sort of financial income to support
her and her daughter, but it just feels out of character for Cath to
take such a rash decision so quickly. Later in Episode 3, when Andy
confronts Cath, we get a bit more explanation behind her actions, but
by this point in the series and after so much happening, it comes a
bit too late in the day. Throughout the series, we also have a bit of
a sub-plot concerning Cath's ex, Karl, and the danger of him
following Cath to Edinburgh in order to see his daughter. While it
does tie in to the main plot in the last episode, most of the time, I
found this sub-plot to be the least interesting aspect of the show,
as I was much more compelled by the things that were going on with
Cath at the hospital.
But
on a happier note, I can say that the rest of Trust Me's
supporting characters come across far better, particularly Cath's
co-workers. Sharon Small leaves perhaps the biggest impression as
Brigitte – someone a bit overly forward and who cuts corners with
their job, but still really down to earth and likeable. (Spoiler
Warning!) Even though she was probably designed to be a bit of a
dark mirror to Cath, and when we find out about her drinking problem,
I still kind of liked her, and a large part of that is down to Sharon
Small's very multi-layered performance. We also have Charlie and
Karen, and while they may not exactly be crucial to the main plot,
their friendship with Cath and the possibility of a romance between
them, do make them fun to watch and they help to add a bit of light
to Trust Me's darker tone. Trust Me is
also a pretty good-looking series from a technical point of view.
It's beautifully directed by both John Alexander and Amy Neil,
especially the shots of Edinburgh's picturesque landscapes. Even
without being a particularly colourful location, the often foggy
Edinburgh that we still see looks wonderful. That's not to discredit
the segments that take place inside the hospital, which by contrast
do a great at feeling busy and hectic, especially thanks to some
appropriately-used handheld camerawork. It wasn't until watching some
of the behind the scenes footage for Trust Me that I
discovered the hospital wasn't actually a genuine hospital, but a
studio set. The wards and offices felt so authentic and real that I
had no idea, so a huge well done should go to the production team
here.
In
conclusion, Trust Me is one very good bit of drama
that's fully capable of standing on its own two feet. It may sadly be
remembered for being in the right place at the right time, but even
though Jodie Whittaker's casting as someone pretending to be a doctor
is either a stroke of genius or just really lucky, Trust Me
does deserve more than that. Set aside a couple of issues,
and you've still got fantastic performances, writing, production
values and more. If you're a Doctor Who fan who remains
unconvinced by the casting, this may be worth checking out, and even
if you're not a Whovian, it's still definitely worth giving Trust
Me a watch.
Trust Me
8/10