The Escape Artist seemed like a very good piece of original drama, but about forty minutes into the first episode, I gave up. Now, let’s get the record straight: I love TV. I could and often do chain-watch episode after episode. I take fictional character’s opinions more seriously than those of actual characters of my life. So, I am definitely allowed to critique the new BBC drama, starring David Tennant and Sophie Okonedo, which started on Tuesday night.
The acting is unsurprisingly brilliant, enhanced by an ersatz Scandinavian bleakness that has been bequeathed to Britain by The Killing, The Bridge et al. The small nuances in each actor and actress’s performance strengthened the discontinuous atmosphere in this chilling first episode.
The storyline was the only thing that made me stop in my tracks. I use the idiom ‘stop in my tracks’ not because I am a fox, but I use that word euphemistically because ‘stomp off to bed in a femmo rage’ doesn’t quite have as much sophistication. See, the thing is that even though I love TV and find good drama better than Tramadol at Christmas time, if I have to endure another episode of anything that uses sexual assault, rape or the murder of a woman as a plot device again, I will lose the will to live.
At the beginning of this episode, a man is accused of torturing and murdering a young woman. You see two pictures of the woman: a picture of her in happier days and, later, the unfocused image of her eyeless corpse in the background of a court scene. I don’t know why this rubbed me up the wrong way, but I think it is a case of being saturated with writers appropriating these horrific acts as ways to further a plot. Furthermore, it is often to further a man’s storyline. Hence, The Escape Artist is now being scrutinised.
It must be monumentally triggering for a rape survivor to turn on the television after a long day at work to see their worst moments being used as a way to introduce a character. There was no warning at the beginning of The Escape Artist. To go blindly into this program, like I did, was like walking into a minefield – waiting for something to inevitably go off and scare you stiff.
It’s not just The Escape Artist. Law & Order: SVU does it every episode and is one of the most popular shows in the world. The problem is not the fundamental mention of rape. This is not why I’m devoting my time to write this. What I dislike about this relatively new trend of 'rape-sploitation' is how normal we are treating sexual assault. We see it every day on TV and in movies, and so it is becoming everyday. Mundane. Routine. These unforgivable crimes have become almost boring, when they shouldn’t be anything of the sort. We are now blasé to the most heinous of acts. And that was the most shocking part of The Escape Artist.
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