Doctor Foster Season 1

What BollyAI Thinks

Series 1 aired on BBC One from September to October 2015, attracting up to 10.2 million viewers and establishing Suranne Jones as one of the dominant British television performers of the decade. Critics scored it at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes from 11 reviews. The Guardian called it a brilliant and gripping portrait of a marriage slowly being poisoned; The Daily Telegraph gave it four stars. Mike Bartlett's script drew on the Greek myth of Medea - an educated woman's cold, strategic response to betrayal - without making the classical reference feel schematic. The show's refusal to let Gemma be a simple victim or a simple villain was the quality critics and audiences clustered on; Jones's ability to make both registers simultaneously legible drove the season's 9.5 million average viewership.

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The Room

Standout Episodes

The hours worth arguing about — premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.

1. E1Episode 18.5

   The premiere establishes Gemma Foster's perfectly ordered world - successful GP, beautiful house, devoted son - and then, through accumulated small wrongnesses, begins to dismantle it. Mike Bartlett's script trusts the audience to read subtext, and Jones's performance trusts the script; the result is a first episode that communicates an enormous amount through expressions held a half-second too long.

   The moment: Gemma discovering lipstick on a coat and choosing, for now, to say nothing - the moment the series' central psychology snaps into focus.

   “A brilliant and gripping portrait of a marriage slowly being poisoned.” — The Guardian