JP Delaney (one of the pseudonyms used by the prolific author Tony Strong) writes well-paced thrillers with a great hook. Like Salman Rushdie and Fay Weldon, Strong was originally an ad man at Ogilvy & Mather and his books are the kind you can read with half your brain somewhere else (in an airport lounge, hospital waiting room or booster queue) with no harm done. The Girl Before (BBC One) is the first of his Delaney books to be brought to the screen, and it has neither gained nor lost anything in translation. This is not a complaint. Solid storytelling is a great and needed skill, especially at this exhausting time of year and at the end of this particularly exhausting year or two (or three, four or five … ). I mean merely to manage your expectations, so you match material to mood and have as good a time as possible.
The story comprises two alternating timelines. The first (chronologically speaking) involves a young couple, Emma (Jessica Plummer) and Simon (Ben Hardy), who move into One Folgate Street, a beautiful ultra-minimalist, fully automated house, designed and built by owner-landlord and enigmatic architect Edward Monkford (David Oyelowo, unerringly treading the fine line between self-possessed and creepy), in the wake of a traumatic burglary of their own home.
All potential candidates are vetted by a questionnaire (sample queries: what are your only truly essential possessions; would you sacrifice yourself to save 10 innocent people; is your spider-sense tingling yet; why don’t you just play it safe and head over to Rightmove now?) and then interviewed by Edward. Despite Simon not wanting to live there because they are naturally messy and Emma promptly proving this by spilling her coffee over the blueprints on Edward’s desk, Edward (who seems – and I think we’ll formally capitalise this to make it as clear as it is in the book and on screen – Strangely Drawn to Emma) nevertheless accepts them as tenants.
They have to sign a special contract that precludes, among other things, children, pets, rugs, ornaments, books, anything being left on the bed or floors or any new plants in the garden, and which allows inspections to make sure the 200 rules are being followed. Sure, you reason, as Emma crams the single wardrobe provided with every garment she owns and they immediately get a coke-fuelled, wine-spilling, candle-wax-dripping housewarming party underway, nothing can go wrong here.
The second timeline involves a new tenant, Jane (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who has also agreed to the exacting house rules, having made Edward’s grade. She is the first, the agent tells her, to do so in the three years since the last lot left and is also moving in the wake of a trauma. She also looks almost exactly like Emma, but surely this is just a massive coinkydink, yes?
No. But again, no harm done. It’s the red flags that make it fun.
Jane is savvier than Emma and Simon, and interrogates her landlord about the hows, whys and wherefores of her extremely affordable rent and his decision not to live in his own house. He explains that the electronic housekeeper system gathers information on “the user experience” – that’s you, Jane. Here, take this red flag. Don’t plant it in the garden, you’re not allowed, but take it please – and the data (“Almost nothing that Google or Facebook don’t know about you”) is in place of market rent. Oh, and he doesn’t live there because his wife and baby were killed by a collapsing wall on a site visit during the build. Anyway, sign here.
Bouquets of flowers are left on her doorstep in the days after she moves in. Eventually, she catches the man leaving them. It is Simon. Why the flowers, bucko? Why, to mark the third anniversary of his wife’s death. Didn’t Jane know the previous tenant died there? For some reason, Simon does not remark upon the unmistakable resemblance between Jane and Emma, but fortunately the interest of Jane’s colleague is struck by the death-in-situ news and pulls up a picture of her online. Jane and friend agree they look very similar indeed. Anyway, sleep well in your rugless, bookless, clutter-free bedroom, subject to inspection at any time, Jane.
Edward, who we see in his office moving a little Jane figure round a scale model of the house on his desk as he talks to her on the phone, asks her out later. She says no, then yes.
By this point the red flags are floating in a pool of the brain matter that has peacefully deliquesced over the last hour and leaked gently out of your ears. That too is part of the fun.
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