The Feud, review: a domestic thriller that is startling in its unoriginality

Telegraph

14-04-2025

Channel 5's new domestic thriller, The Feud, written by Aschlin Ditta, is essentially Abigail's Party Wall Agreement. It tells the story of an idyllic suburban street where everyone falls out after one of the happy families decides to do a kitchen extension.
Anyone who has popped round to the neighbours to show them some plans over a nice cup of tea, then opened their laptop to see a slew of objections from people worried that this manifest outrage will stuff their hydrangeas, will know the drill. But as drama must, The Feud takes petty disagreements to their logical conclusion: when the show begins there is blood on the door jambs as a prospective buyer asks if this was the house where that couple were killed. We then cut back to a month earlier to find out how the idyll soured and a friendly street descended into rancour and violence.
That 'one month earlier' caption is an early warning sign: whatever else it is, The Feud is a startlingly unoriginal piece of work. I have lost count of the number of TV dramas that begin with a gruesome ending and then flash back to 'several months earlier' to show how it all went wrong. I have also lost count of the number of domestic dramas where friends and neighbours turn out to be nothing of the sort and there's a secret behind every smile.
What's worse is that The Feud begins with a clichéd set-up and then compounds the error by telling the story in an entirely hackneyed manner. This is Meccano drama that spends the first episode assembling the constituent parts and then unsubtly bolting them all together.
Shelbury Drive, our locus, contains an older couple whose son disappeared a few years ago, an oddball busybody who's obsessed with CCTV and parking permits, the Barnetts – who do have a child, albeit an unruly teen – and their neighbours Alan and Sonia who don't have a child but now wish they did. Every character exists to serve a particular forthcoming plot point, and nothing else. Chuck in a secret tryst that you can see coming like a truck on full beam and every element of Drama for Dummies 1st Edition is present and correct.
There are one or two reasons to stick with The Feud but they extend only to a strong cast (Jill Halfpenny, Rupert Penry Jones, Adam Macqueen, Louisa Harland, James Fleet) doing their damnedest with limited material; and some unintended comedy.
'Doing a kitchen extension… that could be exciting,' says Emma at one point without a hint of irony. It's a banger of a line. Kitchen extensions are only 'exciting' in the way that a colonoscopy or LinkedIn posts are exciting.
If you haven't seen any television, read any books or indeed done a kitchen extension yourself in the last five years it's possible that the burgeoning feud in The Feud will be at least mildly intriguing. It is a modern truth, for example, that people banging on about the life-enhancing qualities of kitchen islands can indeed inspire murderous thoughts. Otherwise, though, this is a feud best left behind closed doors.