REVIEWS
Netflix’s Obsession Review: Much Less Sexy Than It Looks
This erotic thriller is bafflingly devoid of thrills.

By Louisa Mellor
April 13, 2023

Titillating trash. Satisfying drama. As deep as it thinks it is – all things that Netflix’s Obsession isn’t. This four-part series adapted from Josephine Hart’s 1991 novel Damage (memorably filmed as Louis Malle’s 1992 feature film of the same name) aims to be an arty, meaningful portrait of erotic obsession but turns out to be more of a boner-killer.

It’s not the fault of the cast, who commit mightily to the task. Richard Armitage and Charlie Murphy dial up their intensity to dangerous levels as William and Anna, two people whose affair blasts apart their lives.

Anna is dating William’s besotted son, but shares a sexual frisson with his father that proves irresistible. After a chance meeting at a work do in which Will breathily pushes an olive between Anna’s lips and gets such a lob-on that he has to spend the rest of the episode deflating it on his exercise bike, they start shagging. Thank goodness, because Will’s trousers weren’t going to survive many more family Sunday roasts of passing the peas while attempting to tuck it behind his belt.

Another reason to be grateful that Will and Anna give in to their attraction without putting up much of a fight is that the shagging stops them from delivering more of Obsession’s dialogue, which is in English, but achieves the odd effect of sounding as though it’s been dubbed from another language, possibly one invented by an AI.

We should have been prepared for such a wide swerve to have been taken around naturalism by the opening scene in which Will – a brain surgeon in only the most literal sense – scrubs down after successfully separating conjoined twins and is told by a colleague “It was a pleasure to watch you in there” with all the humanity of a online retailer Chatbot.

More zingers follow when Will’s wife Ingrid – the excellent Indira Varma, wasted here like the rest of them – announces to Will that he’s “had an enormous few weeks” and “a weekend out in the country will do them all some good”. The dialogue isn’t just dull, it’s blank. Ellipsis has been repeatedly mistaken for importance. It makes you wonder if a voice-over narration was planned and then cut. That, or whether the creators are pre-emptively allowing space for the cast of Gogglebox to add in the actual entertainment.


Will, for one, barely says a single word until the final episode (he hasn’t the time, what with all the erection-reducing-cycling sprints and silent window staring on his schedule). Possibly the idea was to show that, as in the novel, he’s barely alive until he meets Anna. Without his internal monologue though, the result is that we don’t know him, never get to know him, and only know him as the awful man who recklessly prioritises his horniness over his son’s happiness and fakes hospital emergencies to hook up with his mistress.

Will’s easily the worst person on Netflix, including its catalogue of true crime serial killer docs. He follows his knob to utter destruction and teaches us nothing other than ‘don’t’ in the process. Well, durr. There are no insights offered here, and no probing beyond that done in juddery thrusts on the parquet floor.

Anna’s sketched with a slightly surer hand. In an attempt to make her more than just a temptress, thought has clearly gone into her psychology, her family’s history of abuse, her personal erotic blueprints and her desire to submit to control. None of that though, succeeds in making her anything other than maddening company. Charlie Murphy can do wonders with the right material and starts to come alive towards the end, but Anna’s evasive “learn to love the questions” catchphrase here is unacceptable. Anybody who attempted it in real life and not within the confines of a loftily ambitious Netflix four-parter much of which they spend gasping in pleasure while Guy of Gisborne drips water on them from a cold flannel would be told to get over themselves and rightly so.

The sex is frank but also off-puttingly self-important. Anna and Will come across as too pleased with themselves and their secret trysts to be able to enjoy the sight of them going at it in violent, hair-pulling bursts. Viewer mileage on how erotic it feels will obviously vary, but it’s difficult to push aside the thought during scenes of extended rutting that you’re watching a nature documentary without the commentary. If you experience different, then I wish you joy of it.

The pity is Obsession’s overall blankness, which confuses ambiguity with profundity. By its end, when a plot finally shows up, nothing much is concluded or provoked. The talented cast led by Armitage and Murphy give it everything, but through no misstep of their own, achieve very little.

Obsession is available on Netflix now.

The main thing I’m learning is that having an affair is way easier than I thought
Patrick Freyne: Yes, it’s the 1980s again, baby, with Netflix’s erotic thriller Obsession breathlessly leading the way

Netflix’s new erotic thriller, Obsession, begins with a silver fox engaging in some complicated, presumably erotic surgery. He’s not a literal silver fox, for that would be hideous, but a figurative one named William (Richard Armitage). William is a hunky surgeon, which is one of the many types of hunk you need for an erotic thriller if you’re playing by the rules Paul Verhoeven set down in the 1980s.

The word “obsession” then looms at us through the darkness and eerie music plays. It’s erotic drama time. Here’s the pitch: William, a posh Englishman, is in the thrall of a manipulative femme fatale named Anna played by Ireland’s own Charlie Murphy who is pretending to be English. “Good woman yourself, Charlie,” is the only appropriate response to this, followed by a few bars of A Nation Once Again.

Now, another thing that’s worth mentioning about Anna is that she is William’s son’s girlfriend. This, I think you’ll agree, is very erotic. Yes, it’s the 1980s again, baby. A new Fatal Attraction adaptation is debuting next week on Paramount Plus. Elsewhere on Netflix, Sex/Life is playing. “Erotic drama” is no longer a nickname your friends had for you behind your back. It’s a genre once again. You now have my permission to sing A Genre Once Again (and listen to the excellent Erotic Eighties series of Karina Longworth’s podcast You Must Remember This).

Obsession is adapted by Morgan Lloyd-Malcolm from Josephine Hart’s novel Damage. It quickly becomes clear that the reason they made William a celebrity surgeon is that for much of the show he stands looking dazed and slack-jawed at the edge of social gatherings, gazing across a room at Anna while other people have conversations across him. There’s a danger that if he didn’t have a high-powered job, we’d think Anna was taking advantage of an older man with a bad concussion.


William’s jaw goes slack from the first moment he and Anna catch eyes across a crowded room. They meet at a bar counter and speak breathily and gruntily at one another for a bit before he feeds her an olive with his fingers. This, I think you’ll agree, is fierce erotic altogether. He goes to a gym and furiously cycles a stationary bike, which is a great euphemism and one I hope takes off. “Off to furiously cycle the stationary bike,” we’ll be saying come month’s end.

William goes and does another operation (it’s unclear if he washed his hands) and then he gets an erotic text from Anna on his erotic phone inviting him to her friend’s erotic apartment

Anna visits William’s family in their fancy family house in the countryside. William makes an erotic drink for Anna erotically. Over dinner Anna and William glare at one another lustily while no one else in the family notices. The main thing I’m learning from this is that having an affair is way easier than I thought.

William goes and does another operation (it’s unclear if he washed his hands) and then he gets an erotic text from Anna on his erotic phone inviting him to her friend’s erotic apartment. He goes there and they both have very serious, uncomfortable-looking sex on the wooden floor tiles and I find myself thinking erotic thoughts like: “Where did they get those floor tiles? Is that a parquet floor?”

By episode two, it’s clear that the intimacy co-ordinator has seized power and that the director is tied up in a press somewhere, because we open with Anna and William having uncomfortable looking BDSM-adjacent sex against the wall and then facing each other while kneeling on the floor. Then they just lie on the floor naked as William drips cold water from a handkerchief on to Anna because apparently they don’t have a bed or a shower.

She tells him a terrible secret from her past and he demands a page from her sex diary, about which he will presumably ride the stationary bike later on

To be honest, this is all an excellent way of showing the strengths and weaknesses of the property and I had a lot of thoughts about how I’d decorate it. My main thought: more cushions. At one point William rests his chin against an arse (presumably Anna’s; it’s confusingly shot) because even he wants a cushion. He’s in his 50s. This is the deep subtext that I’m taking away from these sex scenes: cushions are erotic.

They also have a discussion about the “rules” of their various sex games. Light BDSM is big with people who love bureaucracy. There are a lot of rules. Anna even writes up reports in a diary. A little later, William is furiously riding the stationary bike (literally) when she texts him to visit again. When he does so, she tells him a terrible secret from her past and he demands a page from her sex diary, about which he will presumably ride the stationary bike later on.

He then follows Anna and his son Jay to Paris where they are spending a romantic weekend. William feels he can add something to this. He watches them from across the road, then contacts Anna and they have frantic sex in a nearby alleyway. This doesn’t happen as often as you might think in Emily in Paris. But there’s more! When Anna and Jay leave Paris, William books into their hotel room and proceeds to furiously cycle the stationary bike (figuratively), by which I mean he has energetic sex with the bed while sniffing a cushion and weeping.

This is, frankly, the most erotic scene in the whole show so far. It again betrays William’s deep desire for cushions and back support. I hope for a few moments that impressionable, sad-eyed William is going to transfer his lust for Anna to this cushion, turning their dangerous love triangle into a more equitable, sex-positive and frankly comfortable love square. But he does not.

Although William doesn’t return to London wearing a T-shirt that says: “I went all the way to Paris and had energetic sex with a bed while sniffing a cushion and weeping”, he might as well do, because his wife suspects something is up. Perhaps it is the way he continuously gawps at his son’s girlfriend. Perhaps it is the amount of time he spends on the stationary bike. The suspicion grows after Anna and Jay become engaged and William starts receiving mysterious texts from a stranger who claims to know his secrets (the cushion thing, probably). This will unravel in the subsequent episodes with all the heteronormative, sex-terrified melodrama of a 1980s erotic thriller and not, sadly, the devil-may-care insouciance of a 1970s sex comedy.

If you’re looking for an excellent show about obsessive behaviour please watch, instead, Beef (Netflix) created by Lee Sung Jin. The title is a reference not to cattle’s “food name” but to the slang term for acrimonious disagreements. It features Steven Yeun and Ali Wong as two stressed-out strangers who end up in an absurdly escalating dispute over a minor traffic incident in sun-scorched South California. It tells a darkly comic and surprisingly tender story about economic insecurity and social expectation, all filtered through powerful, ragefully-vulnerable performances from Yeun and Wong and the extended cast. It’s deeply original and just very, very good.

„Obsession“ Staffel 1: Die Handlung & das Ende erklärt
Was passiert in der 1. Staffel der Netflix-Serie „Obsession“? Hier findest du eine Zusammenfassung der Handlung, die dir alle offenen Fragen zum Ende der ersten Staffel beantwortet.

Veröffentlicht am: 13. April 2023 von Andreas Engels
Spoiler-Warnung: Dieser Artikel enthält wesentliche Handlungselemente.

Wir sind immer noch überwältigt von dem atemberaubenden Ende der neuesten Netflix-Serie „Obsession“! Leserinnen und Leser von Josephine Harts Roman „Damage“ werden vielleicht weniger überrascht sein, aber die vierteilige Miniserie wird bei vielen Abonnentinnen und Abonnenten ganz oben auf der „Must-Watch“-Liste stehen, wenn sie sich in die intensive und fesselnde Geschichte vertiefen.

Die Serie dreht sich um William Farrow (dargestellt von Richard Armitage) und Anna Barton (gespielt von Charlie Murphy). Anna ist die neue Freundin und spätere Verlobte von Williams Sohn Jay. Obwohl William verheiratet und Jay (Rish Shah) mit Anna verlobt ist, lassen sich Anna und William auf eine verbotene Liebesbeziehung ein, was die Geschichte so verdreht macht, wie man es sich nur vorstellen kann.

Wenn du neugierig auf das Ende von Obsession bist oder das schockierende Ende erfahren möchtest, lies weiter.

Die Handlung von „Obsession“

William ist ein lüsterner Vater, der gleichzeitig ein renommierter und talentierter Chirurg ist. Nachdem er eine schwierige Operation zur Trennung von siamesischen Zwillingen erfolgreich abgeschlossen hat, betonen alle, insbesondere seine Frau Ingrid, seine Wichtigkeit und Brillanz.
Kurze Zeit später besucht das Paar den luxuriösen Landsitz von Ingrids Eltern, wo sie versuchen, die Identität der attraktiven neuen Freundin ihres Sohnes Jay aufzudecken.

William, der sich auf eine bedeutende politische Rolle vorbereitet, lernt Jays‘ temperamentvolle Freundin Anna (Charlie Murphy) auf einer Party in Westminster kennen. Dort werden lüsterne Blicke ausgetauscht. Von da an überschlagen sich die Ereignisse.

In kürzester Zeit verstrickt sich das Duo in eine leidenschaftliche Affäre und trifft sich in einer teuren Wohnung. Anna informiert William über die „Regeln“: Sie wird immer die Kontrolle haben, außer wenn sie in der Wohnung sind, wo er seinen Gelüsten nachgehen kann. Zu seinen Vorlieben gehört es anscheinend, ihr Tagebuch zu lesen und sie gelegentlich mit seidenen Bändern zu fesseln.

Das Ende von „Obsession“ erklärt:
Nimmt sich Jay das Leben?

n einer wirklich erschreckenden Szene stürzt Jay über das Geländer vor Annas Wohnung und stürzt in das darunter liegende Treppenhaus. Der Moment ist wirklich schockierend, vor allem weil Jay die Affäre seines Vaters und seiner Verlobten entdeckt und sie mitten in ihrer Liaison erwischt.
Die Ereignisse überschlagen sich förmlich, sodass es äußerst schwierig ist herauszufinden, ob Jay aus Versehen stürzt oder sich absichtlich fallen lässt und damit Selbstmord begeht.

Die Möglichkeit ist nicht weit hergeholt, da Annas Bruder schon einmal ein ähnliches Ende genommen hat und ihre Mutter Elizabeth während eines Gesprächs mit William auf Jays Beerdigung andeutet, dass Jay sich das Leben genommen haben könnte.

Es scheint, als bliebe es den Zuschauern überlassen, die Wahrheit zu interpretieren – war es ein tragischer Unfall oder eine bewusste Handlung?

Kommen William und Anna am Ende von Obsession zusammen?


Anna und William kommen am Ende der Serie nicht zusammen.
William scheint relativ reuelos mit der Situation umzugehen und meint, dass sie jetzt ein Paar sein können, da Jay verstorben ist und ihr Geheimnis gelüftet wurde.

Anna verachtet jedoch das Leid, das sie anderen zugefügt haben, und bereut es, William jemals begegnet zu sein.

Sie weist William an, sie nicht mehr aufzusuchen und zieht daraufhin aus ihrer Wohnung aus, die William erwirbt.

Was ist zwischen Anna und ihrem Bruder Aston passiert?

Annas lebenslanger Kampf mit einem ungelösten Trauma könnte eine Erklärung für ihr problematisches Verhalten sein. Annas Bruder Aston war als Kind so besessen von ihr, dass er sie sexuell missbrauchte und sich immer wieder in ihr Leben einmischte. Da Anna so jung war, fehlte ihr die Erfahrung und Reife, um mit einer solchen Erfahrung umzugehen.
Anna gibt sich selbst die Schuld an Astons Selbstmord, denn es war das einzige Mal, dass sie sich gegen ihn wehrte.

In der letzten Folge von Obsession verschlechtert sich die Situation noch weiter, als Annas Mutter zugibt, dass sie die ganze Zeit über von dem Missbrauch wusste, aber nie eingegriffen oder versucht hat, Aston zurückzuhalten. Diese Enthüllung bricht Anna das Herz.

Elizabeth behauptet, sie habe geglaubt, ihre Tochter sei „glücklich“, aber es ist unvorstellbar, dass jemand ein solches Szenario so nah an sich heranlässt, ohne etwas dagegen zu unternehmen. Anna betont, dass sie nur ein Kind war und ihre Mutter ihre Pflicht, sie zu schützen, nicht erfüllt hat.

Was passiert am Ende der Miniserie?
Am Ende von Obsession scheint sich Annas emotionaler Zustand etwas zu bessern, als sie beginnt, eine Therapie zu besuchen. Da sie noch nie eine Therapie gemacht hat, ist die Erfahrung für sie ziemlich entmutigend, was der Therapeut schnell merkt. Er schlägt ihr vor, einige Grundregeln aufzustellen, was Annas Aufmerksamkeit erregt. Wir wissen ja, wie sehr sie Regeln mag. Das Finale deutet an, dass Anna sich vielleicht gar nicht so sehr verändert hat, wie man denken könnte.

Was bedeutet das Ende von Obsession?
Das Finale von Obsession ist ziemlich rätselhaft und macht es schwierig, den genauen Ausgang für Anna und William zu bestimmen. Die Serie lässt Raum für verschiedene Interpretationen zu, aber es scheint klar, dass die beiden in Zukunft getrennte Leben führen werden.

Ist der Kauf der Wohnung durch William ein Zeichen dafür, dass er unablässig auf Anna fixiert ist? Erinnert der Vorschlag des Therapeuten, Regeln aufzustellen, an frühere erotische Begegnungen, die Anna hatte? Deutet die verweilende Kameraperspektive auf eine mögliche sexuelle Spannung zwischen Anna und ihrem männlichen Therapeuten hin?

Das zweideutige Ende regt die Zuschauer/innen dazu an, ihre eigenen Schlüsse zu ziehen und über die ungelösten Probleme der Figuren nachzudenken.

Trailer zu „Obsession“

Obsession review – the actors in this erotic thriller all seem to need the toilet
Presumably the odd facial expressions in this woeful drama are meant to say ‘barely controllable lust’. They actually say: ‘really regretting that bad oyster’

William Farrow (Richard Armitage) is not just a surgeon – he is a brilliant surgeon making headline news by successfully separating conjoined babies! In fact, he is not just a brilliant surgeon making headline news by successfully separating conjoined twins, but modest too! (“A pleasure to watch you in there,” says one of his younger colleagues, before William assures him it was a team effort). Plus, not only is he a brilliant but modest twin-divider, he is long-married to a hot successful lady barrister (Indira Varma), so he is sexy and feminist too! All in all, it is about time everything went to pot by reason of him falling into obsessive love with his twentysomething son’s mysterious girlfriend-cum-fiancee Anna (Charlie Murphy) and making an absolute tit of himself.

And lo, because Netflix’s new four-part “erotic thriller” filling in the recently vacated Sex/Life slot is based on Josephine Hart’s 1991 novel Damage, it comes to pass. Damage, readers of a certain age will remember, was the following year made into a film starring Jeremy Irons as the infatuated older man, Juliette Binoche as the enigmatic femme fatale and Miranda Richardson stealing the whole show as the shattered wife and mother.

We have come a long way in many fields of human endeavour since the early 90s, but, alas, actors have still not learned to run fast and run far from anyone who wants them to appear in anything with the words “erotic” or “obsessive love” in the brief. Writers, producers, directors – they will tell you that it is going to be an exploration of the moral complexities of infidelity, or a grim interrogation of the depths to which humanity will sink in the pursuit of the prime penis-directive, or a study of how psychological damage affects everyone involved. And yet, it only ever ends up with you getting your bum out in the service of art and people sitting on the sofa picking their noses and going: “Well, I don’t see what she/he sees in him/her, do you?”

There was, many earnest publicity interviews with the cast and crew have assured us, an intimacy coordinator on set, and “nudity parity” was ensured. So, equal bums and equal bits mean that we can all relax and enjoy the sex scenes – of which there are many. William and Anna’s eyes first meet across a crowded drinks party “in parliament” (the script is woeful) and soon there is nudity parity in her friend’s flat, nudity parity up against walls in Paris, nudity parity in a garden. You name it, there’s nudity parity. And, actually, the sex is fine (for the viewer, I mean; Anna and William seem to enjoy it, too, especially once a global streaming platform’s permitted take on BDSM is added to the mix). It’s the obsession bit that’s the problem. Mainly because on camera “gazing at someone with barely controllable lust and adoration” reads uncannily like “being suddenly stricken with the urgent and barely controllable need for a poo”. For much of the time, Armitage and Murphy both look as if they have eaten a bad oyster and need to make a sharp exit – but not for more nudity parity.


The first episode is only half an hour and the rest barely make 40 minutes. Hart’s actual plot is slight, and it is possible that there was a tacit decision to keep all the parts that depend on unspoken sexual tension as brief as possible. After the inaugural olive-eating scene, in which Anna asks “Is that for me?” at the parliament party, and William pushes it into her mouth with a frankly bewildering lack of finesse from someone who has recently separated conjoined twins. Plus, the attempt at smouldering looks over the washing up in the Farrow kitchen after Anna meets her fiance’s parents for the first time. An opportunity was missed to fill this drama with some credible psychological detail or give some complexity or nuance to any of the relationships, instead of requiring wife and fiance occasionally to furrow their brows and assert vague suspicions at fairly random intervals. Maybe they were too busy monitoring the nudity parity spreadsheet.

The leads do their best to sell the thin stuff they have been given. Varma gets one worthwhile, Richardsonesque scene in the final episode, but is otherwise criminally wasted. And Marion Bailey as Anna’s mother Elizabeth does what she can with a part that requires her to be alternately all-wise, all-seeing wise-woman-on-the-hill and utter simpleton.

There is a risible attempt – late, late on – to give more weight to Anna’s backstory and the cause of her inner damage. It is no more than gestural, which, given the subject matter, seems borderline irresponsible. But you’ll have seen some bums and bits and maybe next time will be better. At least the twins are stable.

This article was amended on 14 April 2023 to replace a reference in the text and subheading that may have given unintended offence.

OBSESSION: NETFLIX DRAMA
All / Film/Video/TV / Reviews / April 16, 2023
OBSESSION: little actual visible kink content, and what there is has been styled after S&M movies from 30-40 years ago (Netflix)
OBSESSION (Netflix) has little visible kink content, and what there is, such as this scene between William and Anna, takes its style straight from mainstream S&M-themed movies of 30+ years ago

Obsession: lots of sex and deceit, but not much to say about BDSM
Pre-publicity for new Netflix miniseries Obsession milked its alleged BDSM content to the max. But in reality this four-part drama (based on Josephine Hart’s 1991 novel Damage) is severely hogtied by the platform’s restrictions on portraying kink. And packing the story with so much basically vanilla sex as to leave virtually no room for exploration of psychology or character is a sad waste of talented actors. Banner, l-r: Richard Armitage (William), Charlie Murphy (Anna) and Rish Shah (Jay) in Obsession (image: Netflix)
OBSESSION
(Four-part Netflix miniseries)
Starring: Richard Armitage, Charlie Murphy, Indira Varma, Rish Shah
Directed by: Glenn Leyburn, Lisa
Barros D’Sa
Screenplay: Morgan Lloyd Malcolm,
Benji Walters
Reviewed by Tony Mitchell

Back in 1991, the author Josephine Hart published Damage, a critically acclaimed morality tale about an obsessive and ultimately destructive love affair.

In 1992, French director Louis Malle (by then working in Hollywood) turned Damage into a film starring Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche, Miranda Richardson and Rupert Graves.

With screenplay by David Hare, the Malle movie told the story of a physician-turned-politician (Irons) who betrays both his wife (Richardson) and son (Graves) by embarking on a reckless and compulsive secret affair with his son’s girlfriend (Binoche).

Obsession, which dropped on Netflix on April 13, has returned to the original literary source material for a new miniseries take on the story. Pre-publicity suggested it would be making rather more of the BDSM element of the novel, avoided by Malle in his earlier adaptation.

Unfortunately though, despite the presence of some great acting talent including Richard Armitage (The Hobbit trilogy), Charlie Murphy (Happy Valley, Halo, Peaky Blinders) and Indira Varma (Kama Sutra, Rome, Game of Thrones), Obsession seems aimed at engaging the same kind of people who perceived Fifty Shades of Grey as a state-of-the-art kink portrayal.

One way Obsession presents itself as a fresh take on Damage’s plot is by tweaking the dom/sub emphasis in the characters of the cheating couple.

William (Armitage), a surgeon with political ambitions, is now less the dominant alpha male and more the compliant collaborator, lustily accepting the role of dom to get his end away with (as it turns out) his son’s girlfriend Anna. At every encounter, it is Anna who tops William from the bottom, controlling exactly how he ‘dominates’ her.

Obsession screenwriter Morgan Lloyd Malcolm has explained that it was really important to her “not to be saying anything like BDSM sex is bad sex”.

At the same time, however, the programme-makers’ alleged desire to restore the BDSM dynamic absent from Malle’s film seems to have been substantially frustrated by what Netflix would permit to be seen on screen.

The result is that while Obsession features plenty of vigorous, naked shagging (enough to require an intimacy co-ordinator), evidence of the couple’s shared interest in sub/dom (and the accoutrements that typically accompany it) is so scant, the production certainly wouldn’t have needed a BDSM co-ordinator (if such even existed).


INDIRA VARMA (left, with Armitage & Murphy): underused as wife Ingrid in Obsession (Netflix)

To be fair, with just four episodes that together add up to only about the same total screen time as the average superhero blockbuster (but with a lot less latex), Obsession is unable to benefit from the longform storytelling opportunities available to grander streaming projects.

Allotted the timespan of a full-size Netflix series, it might, for example, have explored in much greater depth the whole idea of topping from the bottom — a potentially fascinating subject, surely, even if you’re not into BDSM. And who knows, it might even have featured characters fleshed out beyond the paper-thinness Obsession affords them.

As it is, the main function of the other characters in this story is merely to provide the assorted backs behind which William and Anna do the dirty. So basically are these other figures sketched in, I almost missed that William’s wife Ingrid (Varma) is supposed to be a top barrister. Her job description might as well have been picked out of a hat for all it adds to the mix.

Obsession actually opens in a hospital operating theatre, where ‘brilliant surgeon’ William — for some reason you never get a mediocre surgeon in these stories do you? — is just completing the separation of newly-born conjoined twins. What a hero!

However, at Obsession’s compressed narrative pace, it’s not too long before the first hint comes that this apparent paragon of virtue may have other family-splitting talents too. It comes when he attends a political drinks party at which Anna — her identity as his son’s girlfriend not yet revealed — is also present.

Their eyes meet across a crowded cliché and there is instant mutual lust. The first fuck soon follows, and thereafter the action is largely focused on plotting the shortest distance between the duo and their next illicit shag without giving the game away to William’s wife, son Jay (Rish Shah) or daughter Sally (Sonera Angel).

Thanks no doubt to the intimacy co-ordinator, the perfidious pair’s numerous ensuing naked encounters are presented with nudity so tastetful, they might have been recreating famous publicity poses from a coffee-table book of 50 years of soft porn movie posters.


BONDAGE EXTRA-LITE is pretty much all you can expect in the way of BDSM in Obsession (Netflix)

To me, scenes involving light wrist bondage, blindfolding and, er, sensual feeding all evoked half-remembered images from such vintage ‘mainstream’ ventures into S&M territory as 1975’s Story of O or 1986’s 9½ Weeks. Unsurprisingly, by today’s standards, such imagery seems a trifle hackneyed.

Hilarity, meanshile, definitely isn’t a part of Obsession’s offer — except unintentionally. For this, I refer you to the drama’s most violent sex scene, which takes place between William and a non-consenting hotel bed.

Entering the hotel room his son and his fiancée (William’s lover) have just left, and gripped by passion/jealousy/whatever, our hero sets about rogering the bed they were recently sleeping in. He shags the sheets and pokes the pillows. Please show some respect and refrain from tittering at this very serious scene.

Anyone who has read even the shortest online synopsis of Obsession will have been primed for some unspecified devastating consequences to occur at some point — which they do. The terrible event that changes everything is, of course, held back for as long as possible in the narrative arc. But when it happens, it does actually change the tone of this drama for the better.

Suddenly Obsession is no longer merely voyeur to the playing-out of a high stakes illicit affair. Suddenly the story and the characters in it are brought down to earth with a splattering thud, and everything becomes rather more real and authentic as everyone has to deal with the aftermath.

The final chapter of the drama also presents information about Anna’s history that provides a probable explanation for why she’s the obsessive femme fatale that she is.

Perhaps like me, you might feel more time should have been devoted to unpicking this revelation, and perhaps earlier in the story too. But that is not the way with Obsession, which casually tosses in this crucial bit of back story almost as an afterthought. Don’t blink or you might miss it.

Incidentally no equivalent explanation is offered for Williams’s disgraceful betrayal of his wife and children. Presumably he’s like that because, well, he’s just a bloke, innit. And a feminist too, allegedly. I mean, what more do you want? Nobody’s perfect.

So: did Obsession’s makers achieve their objective of not portraying BDSM sex as bad sex? My answer is yes, they did — but only by largely failing to portray BDSM sex at all.

I can’t imagine anyone who does stick with Obsession to the (literally) bitter end coming away blaming BDSM per se for the dark turn that events take towards the finale. It’s clearly the two lead characters’ obsessiveness itself that seals everyone’s fates — rather than the particular type of sex they’re allegedly obsessed by. TM



BELOW: Watch the official Netflix trailer for Obsession, starring Richard Armitage and Charlie Murphy




Tags: BDSM-Lite, Netflix, Streaming Releases