SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE
Jonathan (Oscar Isaac) and Mira (Jessica Chastain) cling to their crumbling relationship.
★★★
OUT 11 OCTOBER (SKY ATLANTIC/NOW) EPISODES VIEWED 5 OF 5
SHOWRUNNER Hagar Levi
CAST Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, Nicole Beharie, Corey Stoll
PLOT Massachusetts. Academic Jonathan (Isaac) and tech exec Mira (Chastain) have been married for ten years (together for 12) with a daughter, Ava. Very slowly their relationship begins to crack, then crumble.
IT’S UNLIKELY THAT Hagar Levi’s adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 TV miniseries-turnedmovie Scenes From A Marriage will spawn an avalanche of TV shows rebooting the Swedish master’s work (Paul Rudd defeats Death at checkers in The Eighth Seal!). Bergman offered a two-hander (Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson) that delivered a forensic examination of a failing marriage. Levi, who has strained-relationship previous with The Affair and In Treatment, takes this conceit, adds Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, and replays it with more iPads and better soft furnishings. The result is interesting and beautifully played but comes nowhere near the emotional wallop of the original.