You do know that Becky and Sasha are the same person, right?

Finishing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2022.  

#50 : Chloe

It was excruciating watching social-media obsessive Becky (a brilliant Erin Doherty) persist with a fake identity in order to escape her dowdy life and fit into a glossy, affluent crowd. “Stop!” you wanted to scream at the screen, sick with anxiety that she was about to be found out. But as it became clearer that she was doing this to find out what happened to her old school friend, Chloe, whose life seemed so perfect online, you started rooting for her to continue the charade and get to the bottom of it.

I've never heard of this - it doesn't exactly sound like my sort of thing, but let's see.

And it's really not my sort of thing at all because there's far too much tension in there - it made me far too anxious!  But, to my surprise, I stuck with it - mostly because the intrigue overrode the anxiety with it drip feeding in the plot pretty well.

And so what is the plot?  Well, The Guardian's précis above is accurate but it doesn't really give you ten per cent of the story - it's a pretty well thought out combination of distant past, recent past and present day whereby elements from one time period explain what's happening or happened in another and it has quite a few lovely "ahhh - that makes sense now" moments.  And the deception that Becky undertakes as she ingratiates herself with Chloe's crowd adds an interesting extra dimension - it also helps that you're never sure what Becky's motives are or how unreliable a narrator she is (you know she isn't 100% reliable, but it's not clear whether she's closer to 90% or 10%).  And you've really got no idea how it's all going to be resolved until very close to the end - and funnily enough, everything is not tied up nicely with bows and everything!

However, we do have to discuss the fact that a lot of the elements of the deception are COMPLETELY unbelievable.  I'm all for suspending disbelief but the hoops that are jumped through here are, at times, far too much for me - but having said that, I still kept watching it, didn't I?

And a large part of that is down to Erin Doherty's performance - she's always watchable and she sells the various conflicting aspects of Becky's personality very well.  The rest of the cast all do a good job, but the requirement for them to be quite so stupid at times did irk me somewhat.  I am going to call out Lisa Palfrey as Pam, Becky's mum who does a great job in a tricky role and Brandon Michael Hall as Josh, who is separate from the main crowd and immediately twigs her deception (and yes, I know "he" didn't really do that but it adds a further interesting element).

It's all very well filmed as well - both in terms of the style and content.  It uses quite a lot of very nice locations (people spend a lot of time driving between them) - Becky also has a lot of very nice dresses considering she's got no money (but that's just one of the many somewhat unbelievable elements).

If I was going to quibble, I'd also say that it probably wouldn't have hurt to have either fewer or shorter episodes - episode four in particular spent a lot of time going nowhere, although it does have a nicely creepy vibe to it (the whole tone of the series changes somewhat when they swap directors halfway through).

But, as I said, I stuck with it and really enjoyed it - I'd never heard of this so I was pleased The Guardian brought it to my attention (even if it did make me somewhat anxious!).  And with that, we're done with our first pass on the list and I've watched a lot of telly, most of which was pretty enjoyable - but, as I'll explain in the following wrap-up post, there's an awful lot of telly I haven't watched!

#49 - Sadly unavailable
2022 - A fine year