Martin Compston’s character in Our House (ITV) seems like a stand-up guy, but of course he’s not. He’s a man in a TV drama! Everyone knows the rules of TV dramas in general and ITV dramas in particular: the women are marvels and the men are conniving swines. Sure enough, no sooner do we see Compston dishing up spaghetti for the children and urging his wife to enjoy her night out, than the wife comes back to find him bonking a neighbour in the Wendy house.
So there’s the theme of Our House, but here’s the concept. Fi, the wife (played by the wonderfully named Tuppence Middleton), arrives home from a work trip some months after that – at least, I think it’s months, but it’s impossible to keep track of the shifting timelines – to find the place stripped bare, with two strangers in the process of moving in. They are the new owners and have the paperwork to prove it, including documents bearing Fi’s signature. Obviously this is her estranged husband’s doing.
Our House is based on a thriller by Louise Candlish, because the main job of a TV producer these days is to buy up the “women’s thriller” section of Waterstones. I don’t mind telling you that I love silly dramas like this, because the key is not to take them anything like as seriously as they take themselves.
The writers probably want us to root for poor Fi. Instead, we marvel at how long the new homeowners put up with this stressful woman standing in their kitchen yelling: “But this is my house!” Or wonder why she doesn’t tell her best mate that the woman caught in flagrante with her husband is part of their friendship circle.
As for Compston, he is great at playing Bram: a sweaty, lying weasel who says to Fi, while literally on top of the aforementioned neighbour: “It’s not what it looks like!”
The editing, though, is all over the shop. Are these scenes happening right now, or last week, or six month ago? Why is there no establishment of the fact that Fi and the other woman (Weruche Opia) were close friends? Even the estranged couple’s living arrangements – they take turns to live at home with the children or move out to a grotty rental flat, which is apparently known as “bird-nesting” – becomes confusing. In what time frame did Bram manage to clear out this enormous house without Fi noticing?
The cast credits inform us that Rupert Penry-Jones will appear in later episodes. He’ll be up to no good. He’s a man, after all.
