Spoilers for Angela Black episode 4 below. Still catching up? Read Steve’s review of episode 3 here.
Airing on Hallowe’en night, the fourth instalment of ITV’s psychological thriller Angela Black presented its audience a fair smattering of subtle horror. Thankfully by 9pm, most of the kids in the neighbourhood had traipsed back home with their carrier bags full of Tangfastics and left us in peace to enjoy this unnerving drama series.
Although spacious and relatively calm, with caring support staff and what looks like a fairly decent coffee machine, the women’s mental health unit that Angela now finds herself in is a shock to Joanne Froggatt’s character. She’s in there because she’s – apparently – suffering some kind of psychosis.
The enigmatic PI and part-time hitman Ed Harrison (Samuel Adewunmi) that she’s got pally with of late is just a figment of her imagination, we’re told. He’s not real but is, in fact, inspired by a cheap airport page turner called Behind Closed Doors by a writer called, yup, Ed Harrison – a novel Angela’s vile husband Olivier (Michiel Huisman) helpfully packed for her stay at the hospital.
Now, of course, at the two thirds stage, we know that there’s plenty more to come from the series in terms of plot and twists. So Angela, it’s fairly clear to see, isn’t suffering a mental health breakdown. She’s being gaslit in a really quite elaborate way. This becomes clear to her only after she’s left the facility and is attempting to piece together what’s happened and happening. Ed, it transpires, is entirely real. Even if that’s probably not his name. Next week should reveal the fella’s true motivations and story.
The present day goings-on moved at a decent pace and pushed the story along nicely here. This fourth episode’s strongest points came in the flashbacks, however. For three weeks now we’ve wondered what ‘Edgewater’ is, having been teased about it plenty. We’ve not really known much about Angela and Olivier’s early marriage either. Here, we learned a little.
Edgewater, we find out, is a leisure centre – a swimming pool where Angela experienced a serious psychotic break after a long and arduous spell of postnatal depression. How she managed to keep her child after the incident we’re not so sure. We also found out how Angela’s mother – who also suffered from postpartum depression – reached out to her daughter as she was dying, but Olivier kept it from her – isolation being a major tool in the coercive controller and abuser’s armoury.
The scenes of Angela’s depression were excellently crafted here. They were really quite hard to watch. We see her mentally unravel slowly in a steady montage of clips in which her newborn won’t stop crying. The wailing is shrill, urgent and relentless. We’re bombarded with the noise; it’s a clever – if risky – tactic. Five minutes doesn’t sound long, but it’s a long time to hear a baby crying so piercingly. We’re being shown what it was like. ‘If you think five minutes is annoying, imagine being the mother,’ we’re effectively being told.
For Angela to wrestle back control of her life and make sure she has a future with her children, she’s going to need to untangle the web of lies and deceit that her swine of a spouse has spun. First stop – finding out about ‘Ed’. That will surely come in next Sunday evening’s penultimate part of Angela Black.
It’s been an engaging and handsome drama so far, with a strong lead performance. The plotting isn’t hugely original and most twists in the tale have been somewhat telegraphed, but it’s a vital examination into the complexities of domestic abuse. For too long, the subject has been skirted over by TV dramas.
Not all abuse is physical; threats, insults, humiliation, isolation, restriction of independence and intimidation form a pattern of abuse that can seem ‘normal’ – or at least less obvious under the traditional banner of ‘domestic abuse’. Here we see those behaviours play out and just how insidious but destructive and truly cruel they are.
Hopefully next week starts to see Angela Meyer turn to Ms Black as she takes her life back and wreaks revenge on the man who callously snatched it from her.
Did you tune in for Angela Black episode 4? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below…
Read Steve’s review of Angela Black episode 5 here.
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The scenes of the mental health hospital are complete bullsht. Would be great if mental health hospitals were actually like that. Makes me angry that they have portaid them to be nice places, when they are nothing like that