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Now is not the time for a sexy drama with a potentially murderous nurse

Now is not the time for a sexy drama with a potentially murderous nurse

Telegraph14-07-2025
The first series of The Couple Next Door (Channel 4) was an erotic thriller set in Leeds, a concept I'm still laughing about two years later. It was about a nice young couple who became embroiled in a relationship with their neighbours, who happened to be Britain's hottest swingers, and ended up as a case of attempted murder.
It did good business, ratings-wise, so we're back in the neighbourhood for another spin. Same street, different couples, although the local Peeping Tom (Hugh Dennis), is still around, doing a spot of community service.
This time, the nice young duo are doctors: heart surgeon Lottie (Annabel Scholey, a dead ringer for the Princess of Wales) and anaesthetist Jacob (Sam Palladio). Along comes a foxy redhead, Mia, who pitches up at the hospital one day to start work as a nurse. Soon she has moved into the house directly across the street from Lottie and Jacob. She wastes no time befriending them, and by 'befriending' I mean trying to seduce them both. Which doesn't take long. Until the end of episode three, in fact, if you want to skip straight to the soft porn. 'Do you think I go around Europe having threesomes?' Mia asks, and the answer on this evidence is: absolutely, yes.
If you're wondering how a nurse can afford to rent the kind of house suitable for a double-income household of hospital consultants – well, Lottie and Jacob wonder about that too. Everything about Mia is mysterious. Series one felt as if it was trying to do something different, but series two is the familiar tale of a malevolent female who worms her way into a household (Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, etc). Mia is running from something in her past, which is glimpsed in flashbacks. She claims to be from Norway, which doesn't impress the ward sister, who huffs: 'You might think that makes you exotic but we have all sorts in here, so don't go thinking you're special.'
There is a taste issue – the suggestion of a nurse being involved in patient deaths inevitably brings to mind Lucy Letby – but you don't come to Channel 4 looking for good taste. Overall, it's enjoyably trashy despite an unsophisticated script and some hammy acting. The whole thing feels unreal. Aimed at an international market (it's a co-production with Starz in the US), it maintains the glorious fiction that the Leeds suburbs look exactly like the set of Desperate Housewives.
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