'The Ex-Wife's Subversive Self-Sabotage Makes for a Suboptimal Series
The Ex-Wife is one of those book adaptations. You know the ones – a dark dive into sheltered, wealthy suburban bliss, where discontent and manipulation fester, someone’s partner gets killed, someone’s kid goes missing, or someone wants to steal your baby. (Yes, yours!) In today’s saturated “prestige” TV era, you can even make it look a little bit like Gone Girl, the gold standard for this subgenre of subversive thriller fiction. The Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window, Netflix’s Safe, The Stranger, and Obsession all hit the mark of literary adaptations you start watching and immediately think, “Oh, it’s based on that kind of book” – a glorified airport paperback with a hint of playful gender politics and a whole lot of recycled plotting.
By the time we press play on BritBox’s The Ex-Wife, based on the 2018 novel by Jess Ryder, we’ve been conditioned to anticipate the beats: an unhappy marriage, a dangerous woman threatening its stability, murky family secrets, extramarital sex, fetishization of the stability of a family, and worryingly aggressive husbands. Tasha (Bridgerton’s Céline Buckens) is a young mother who recently had a child with a wealthy married man, Jack (Tom Mison). He left his wife Jen (Janet Montgomery), or more accurately; he kicked her out of their lush modern house.
But it doesn’t pan out totally peachy for Tasha. She now has to deal with incredible tension from Jack’s family and regular appearances from Jen in their private life, sanctioned and encouraged by her new husband. When Jack’s sister Hayley (Clare Foster) asks Jack and Jen to be her child’s godparents, a chain of events turns Tasha’s life upside-down.
