The week in TV: The Undoing; The Sister; America's War on Abortion – review

The Undoing (Sky Atlantic) | sky.com/Now TV
The Sister (ITV) | itv.com
Exposure: America’s War on Abortion (ITV) | itv.com

There’s one fine line from Hugh Grant early on in The Undoing that establishes, with marvellous economy, that this is something of a quality production, which will come as little surprise to anyone who watched Big Little Lies, also the creation of David E Kelley, also featuring one Nicole Kidman.

Grant’s ridiculously charming oncologist Jonathan Fraser is chatting to wife Grace (Kidman), a hugely bright therapist in her own right with a rich daddy (Donald Sutherland no less), over their immense New York breakfast bar, and over the head of their kid, Henry, a splendid young Noah Jupe, who just gets his dad’s humour. “Keep them protected from reality as long as possible, so when they do eventually emerge they start self-harming, isn’t that the idea?” says Grant’s character, both setting up lightly the differences between gaunt British and marshmallow American humour, and giving us windows of insight into the family dynamic. And it’s all about to go horribly wrong, of course. A murder, a particularly nasty one, and a hubby gone awol and more – I’m happy not to provide spoilers, because for once it’s not all instantly streamable – but I’m up to episode five (of six) and safe to say still gripped.

This is far more of a detectoral and courtroom thriller than the mainly psychological one that was BLL. Which has pros and cons. In the first episode we get the supreme pass-agg bitchinesses of the privileged schoolgate moms towards anyone younger, better boobed or, horror, scholarship-unwealthy. The gossamer sneers are sublime. But soon we will move to simple mystery. Kidman has the toughest job, having to inhabit a shell of, mainly, motherdom, without Grant’s empathy or Sutherland’s mephitic swagger, and pulls this off again of course with immense aplomb. It might be a little too free in its gleeful schadenfreude over trouble having the temerity to befall Wasps, and the Hispanic murderee is equally snubbed in hindsight as she was at those school gates, but it remains, through sheer quality, a keeper that will have you hooked until November’s end.

You’ll surely have become used over the lockdown months to the frustrations that accompany an over-frizzed freezer. Granted, Russell Tovey is not stabbing with a broken spoon at the stalactites guarding a petrified garlic baguette and some petits pois just to save the faff of a corner-shop trip. He’s more hacking at the frozen dress, embedded with his own guilty DNA, of a girl he’s convinced he had a hand in murdering a decade ago (before somewhat rashly marrying her unknowing sister), while the body of a manic ghost hunter he has tried to murder lies twitching at his feet and armed cops batter at the door. But I think you’ll find my general point remains.

Towards the end of third episode of ITV’s all-week spookathon The Sister it truly got rather stressy. Tovey’s character, Nathan, seemed to honestly sweat as he hacked away at his fear and his guilt: there was sudden, genuine eek-to-mouth biting tension and a shocker of a reveal.

The problem was that it took so bloody long to get there. I get what writer Neil Cross et al were aiming for, ratcheting up the spooksomeness nightly, but what with the endless retread shots of Nathan looking haunted (or simply clueless), the triple timelines that simply permitted Bertie Carvel to chew the scenery as the sinister Bob in three differing manky haircuts, Simone Ashley being forever cut and pasted in the backstory as either spangly party girl or more dead in a ditchy (yes, again, it’s a girly dead in a ditch thing, sigh), this was a decent 90-minute Halloweeny twister crammed into a mere entire week.

Even more timely, if rather more serious, was a searing piece on America’s abortion stance, in which film-maker Deeyah Khan went to the heartlands of one cultural phenomenon that we islands may mightily pray is not about to be appropriated from America.

In America’s War on Abortion, we met the staunch Dr Yashica Robinson, an indefatigable soul with, by virtue of being a black feminist doctor who runs one of Alabama’s three remaining abortion clinics and thus being top of a few nasty little lists, something of a haunted air about the eyes. We also went to a clinic in Wichita, Kansas, where they have windows on the top floor only, to deter snipers. Both beleaguered establishments provide services for victims of rape and incest, plus those whose babies have been diagnosed as “incompatible with life”, or a threat to the mother’s life itself. Outside these criteria, unwed or reluctant mothers have to go, in many states, through horn’d hoops – three checks on mental stability, 48 hours apart, despite the fact that they may have to drive, broke, 1,100 miles, and check in to a roach motel and be forcibly presented with ultrasound evidence of life.

If Khan garners any criticism, it will be that she didn’t find the sane counter-arguments, those who might want to make a lucid, sober, principled stance on behalf of the pro-life movement. Yet she tried, honestly she tried. She sat down a nice minister and his wife in their chintzy home and they made sense for, oooh, 12 seconds or so, then their heads began swivelling 360 degrees and they started telling her they “just knew” what Jesus would think, as if He could somehow be co-opted into their highly specific (mid-1650s) worldview, like some obeisant sock puppet or turnip ghost.

Khan also found Jennifer, a “reformed” protester who has renounced violence and now contents herself with merely waggling graphic placards in the faces of recently traumatised weeping women. Yet Jennifer gave it away somewhat when she whispered, as a kindly little aside, that she knew the lead clinician to be in league with “Satan or at least Wicca. Fact.”

By and large I loathe the wall-to-wall warnings bookending so much telly these days, the “some viewers may find some scenes [tautologous, surely?] upsetting” stuff before a cartoon vole loses a wee sock or some such. But even I had to walk, briefly, from the room when faced with some of the quotes and the snarling placards. “By God’s law they should be stoned to death at the edge of the city”; “Black lives don’t matter here”; “Nasty diseased bare-legged whores … ”

Khan made this film after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but, rather crucially, before the appointment a few days ago of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court. Eight out of 10 white evangelists voted for Trump last time around.

Between now and next week, an election will have been fought, so timing-wise I’m going to sound just like Leslie Nielsen’s doctor in Airplane!, entering the cockpit a good 20 seconds after they’ve safely landed. Nevertheless, America: good luck. We’re all counting on you.