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Chloe is a new six-part drama which sees a young woman called Becky (Erin Doherty) scrolling through Instagram (well, a generic equivalent of…), obsessing with a page belonging to the titular character who’s famous, as she dreams of an inspirational life, breaking out of the humdrum existence, living with her mum, Pam, who’s suffering from dementia.
In an attempt to break free, and since her boss can’t go to a posh work drinks function, she steals a colleague’s fancy coat and engineers her way in there, introducing herself with a false name to everyone, bagging a one-night stand into the bargain with a bloke where – despite being very intimate with him – she still feels the need to keep her bra on.
Soon after – and out of the blue – Becky sees messages of condolence for Chloe, and starts trying to find out what happened to her; leading to Becky turning up at an art gallery where a launch is in place for Chloe’s best friend, Livia (Pippa Bennett-Warner), starts acting like she knows everyone and begins to inveigle her way into Livia’s life and friendships, including her Yoga class.
Of course, conning your way into someone else’s life is an easy way to make yourself feel very uncomfortable, and the opener show Becky to be a ridiculously heavy stalker. As such, are we meant to be impressed about just how easy it apparently is to be like this when you’re new to such behaviour? That doesn’t make for a drama that would draw me in.
As an aside, along the way, we can see that in the middle of one night, Becky has had two missed calls from Chloe. However, who doesn’t put their phone on silent at night? There are no important calls that can’t wait until morning.
Chloe begins Sunday February 6th at 9pm. It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
After episode one has been broadcast, I expect the whole series will be on the BBC iPlayer.
Episode 1: Very poor
Series Directors: Amanda Boyle, Alice Seabright
Producer: Joanna Crow
Creator: Alice Seabright
Writers: Alice Seabright, Bolu Babalola, Sam Baron, Poppy Cogan, Kayleigh Llewellyn
Music: Will Gregory
Cast:
Becky: Erin Doherty
Chloe: Poppy Gilbert
Richard: Jack Farthing
Elliot: Billy Howle
Josh: Brandon Micheal Hall
Livia: Pippa Bennett-Warner
Anish: Akshay Khanna
Pam: Lisa Palfrey
Christine: Estella Daniels
Mark Peele: Daniel Betts
Stuart: Ashleigh Reynolds
Jerome: Scott Rose-Marsh
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.