In Netflix’s drama, the tired trope of the wife who descends into an emotional mess is thankfully done away with.
Warning: this article contains major spoilers for Obsession.
Love it or loathe it, the world can’t get enough of Netflix‘s latest erotic thriller Obsession.
The four-part drama, which is written by Morgan Lloyd-Malcolm (The Wasp) and based on the 1991 novel Damage by Josephine Hart, follows William (Richard Armitage) and Anna (Charlie Murphy) as they embark on an obsessive, sexual affair.
In the process, they’re not only skulking around and keeping secrets from one another, but they’re also upending their own relationships and the Farrow family entirely.
It’s part of the reason why the series can be so frustrating to watch at times, the fact that William is so instantaneously enraptured with this stranger that he upends his life for her – but, rather amusingly, without Anna ever urging him to do so.
But in among the pitfalls of the series is also the fact that it excels at incorporating an alternative (and important) portrayal of a betrayed wife in the form of Indira Varma’s Ingrid Farrow.
The acclaimed actress is no stranger to playing a strong female character, just look at her repertoire that includes Game of Thrones, Luther, The Capture, Extrapolations and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
And in Obsession, Varma shines through even in the smaller role of William’s wife. Speaking about adapting the series, Lloyd-Malcolm said of Ingrid: “Even given the catastrophic outcome of William’s affair with Anna and despite the terrible damage that’s been done, she is going to survive it so much better than he is.”
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Ingrid is successful in her career as a top barrister, she’s wealthy, family-oriented, witty and stylish, so naturally fans are left wondering why William is cheating on her in the first place. Morals aside, Ingrid is refreshingly solid and not just the kind of voiceless, sympathy-inducing double-crossed character we often see on our screens.
She isn’t aggressively sipping wine, sliding down doors in tears and becoming a shell of a human once she learns of her husband’s infidelity. Instead, the grief we see consume her is over the death of her son Jay (Rish Shah) in the final episode.
It’s a heart-wrenching scene and one that sees Ingrid harming herself after learning of the news of her son’s accident. But even in the midst of her understandable grief, she spares no time in confronting William with the kind of cut-throat criticism we spend the previous three episodes hoping for.
She says to him: “What did you think it was? Some kind of love? That’s our son, look what you took from him and from me. You have taken him from me.”
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Her grief-stricken sobbing really underlines the emotional toll of the series, rather than just being wrapped up in the sensual. Later on, after viewing Jay’s body, she tells William: “When you knew you were lost to her, you should’ve killed yourself. I could’ve buried you and lived.”
It’s the most emotional we’ve seen of Ingrid in the series and is a culmination of being gaslit by her husband, lied to and now having to cope with the indescribable loss of Jay. But even so, she remains composed and articulate, never failing to deliver searing statements to underline to William the severity of what he’s done. He’s the one that’s ruined his own life, nobody else.
The finale jumps forward in time to the funeral, where William is once again reminded by Edward that Jay did nothing more than strive to be like his father. William is told that he’s allowed to sit with Ingrid and the rest of the family but he lingers back in the hall, hoping to see Anna.
Throughout the series, William has had little shame in destroying his solid family unit but he remains hopeful to see Anna even when confronted with his son’s coffin in the church. Ingrid thankfully takes him to task about it as he looks forlorn and lost on the church bench after the funeral, clearly waiting for Anna.
She’s visibly disgusted by the fact, a vision in an all-black outfit that almost looks like a power suit in the evening dusk of the scene. Ingrid remarks: “I can see how completely irrelevant I’ve become to you and I shall take considerable strength from that.”
Her voice remains monotone and distant as she tells William that this will be the last time they see each other, with William simply stating that he understands. You start to wonder whether he’s even spared a thought for his still-alive daughter, but no sooner do you think that, Ingrid yells: “Just go, will you?” – standing still and tall while William is forced to walk away and get into his car.
Lloyd-Malcom said of her adaptation that paramount to her plans for the Netflix series was to “steer away from the old tropes about nubile young women who wreck marriages and aging wives who are ‘traded in’ by their husbands” – and thank goodness for it too.
Even in the midst of the drama, you can’t walk away from the series thinking that Ingrid has been rendered down to be a helpless character but instead, you’re on her side, spurring her on in that final dramatic confrontation scene. The real ‘all-over-the-place’ person in all of this is William, who does nothing to help himself.
And although we don’t see it, we know that Ingrid has come out on top of this, with her morals, smarts and independence intact.
Obsession is available to stream on Netflix now. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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