Season one of Dominic Savage’s I Am… contained moments of grace and truth, driven by the noble ambition of giving a voice to people too often denied one. But its portraits of women on the verge sometimes soared straight past social realism and into the realm of misery porn. It could feel as if the characters played by Samantha Morton, Gemma Chan and Vicky McClure, who collaborated with Savage on the scripts, were being punished simply because it made for good telly.
The first episode of season two, I Am Victoria (Channel 4, Thursday), is a collaboration between Savage and Suranne Jones. (Future instalments will feature Letitia Wright and Lesley Manville.) Jones also puts in a searing performance as a woman who apparently has it all but is hollowed out by the pressure she puts on herself to be perfect in every aspect of her life.
As she demonstrated in Doctor Foster and Gentleman Jack, Jones is a riveting presence. Here, playing a woman breaking down in a luxury kitchen with minimal white finishings, she is never less than watchable.
There is certainly a sense of watching drama ripped from real life as Victoria and her down-on-her-luck sister have a vicious argument
Victoria has a job she loves, a doting husband (Ashley Walters) and two adorable kids. But the strain of always achieving 100 per cent in whatever she turns her hand to, whether that be life or family, is corroding her soul. And so slowly – and then quickly – she falls apart.
Jones has based Victoria’s struggles on her own experiences before and during therapy. And there is certainly a sense of watching drama ripped from real life as Victoria and her down-on-her-luck sister have a vicious argument. (To be fair, the sister is trying to shake down her sibling for £3,000 while guilt-tripping her for not visiting their mother’s grave. Who wouldn’t flip out?)
One issue with season one of I Am… was that secondary characters were thinly sketched. That remains the case here. Walters’s Chris seems sweet in a two-dimensional way – though he is the sort of busybody do-gooder who won’t give you five minutes to yourself. (And Victoria really, really needs five minutes to herself.) But there is never a sense of him as an autonomous individual. He is there simply to react to Victoria.
Savage and Jones do cook up an emotional storm in a climactic scene when a dinner party goes awry and Victoria snarls “Stop looking at me!” at the smug marrieds who’ve called around. It’s devastating. I Am Victoria could do with more of these moments of unvarnished truthfulness.
