fThe ears open with someone being transported from a rather gorgeous home, in a rather unprepared body bag. As is traditional in all TV dramas, we flash back and find out that things are very wrong.
So the plot begins as the family, a historically important townhouse on Glasgow's gorgeous western tip, moves excitedly with the property. They own everything, apart from the underground flat where a man called Yang (Solly McLeod) lives. He left them a welcome note on Matt – “Here will be a good neighbor.”
Such an overture can be taken in many ways. Like Rebecca, it's a lovely gesture to open your mind. The more calm you get, like Martin, the more polite it is. For introverts, it would be enough to just put on your heels and put your house back for sale again soon. And for the natural-doubted and/or enthusiastic consumers of the thriller, it is enough to portend a complete disaster.
This memo, adapted to Dirk Kurbjuweit's 2017 PageTurner's Mick Ford with the same name, actually portends Doom. The creeping claustrophobic tale of a stalker downstairs begins, thickening with fear in every scene. Calls, or at least notes, then flowers, and letters to police claiming that the couple is committing a terrible crime against their children, come from inside the house. A slight early familiarity from Rebecca, who responded to Yang's first note and some biscuits for the kids, leads Yang to become more and more obsessed with her. However, the standard stalker tropes make a twist by suggesting that Yang is not merely a malicious creep, but a creature of suffering that perhaps leads to a terrible experience of his past.
Nevertheless, Martin and Rebecca (and we as viewers) know that they are not, and their own psychological suffering soon begins to become unbearable to you. Yang can hack into family wifi, eavesdrop on conversations through a smart home hub, and sees the family through a laptop camera. All of these feel very timely and resonant. Similarly, the helplessness of a couple in the face of unfounded but unrefuted allegations resonates with an age where truth, cancellation and online rumors crystallize into facts.
Besides the tension, the fact that Martin resembles his enthusiastic (and estranged) father more than he wants to admit. He repeatedly tried to stand up to Yang, kick the door, scream threats, and act completely in a way designed to fully design the police, rather than supporting his family. He also informs the child's services of Yang's allegations, in a move that destroys half of Yang's harassment evidence, alienates the lawyers they employ, and pushes the boundary between being a reliable portrait of an otherwise increased fear and despair, in an attempt to misplace the situation.
Apart from that, this setup feels terrifyingly realistic, playing horribly and effectively with the mercy of forces that seem to be beyond our control, our innate fear of our home, our safety, our sanity. But unlike most of us, Martin has his father's former gun-loving father, Paratroux. He may be happy to rebuild the bridge with his former pacifist son by providing some form of unanswered protection to his family.
Tension is a matter of fear, but the characters are better than average details. The rational aspect of Rebecca thinks scientists are struggling to contain the animal's fear of child safety, and finds that men who all women find a bit troubling are actually people who don't care about anything because of boundaries. We see Martin's childhood trauma shaping his reaction. Also, genetics can be played in any part (and it's good to see Compton get the chance to play something a little outside his usual quiet everyone's box). It is also known that Space treats Yang with compassion without minimizing the extraordinary harm he has inflicted and the possibility that he has in him. Fear is a stylish and intelligent take on a story that has been told previously but doesn't work that well.
