Obsession Review 2023 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
Someone once said (British, I think) that the largest sexual organ is the brain, probably in defense of a shortcoming. The mini-series (pun intended) “Obsession” sets out to disprove this claim, as two proper, upper-class Brits, a fifty-odd obstetrician and his son’s fiancé, copulate often and with regularity. They are inexplicably compelled to fling themselves at each, fitfully on the parquet the first time, in a quickie as torrid as a rectal examination. While the sex progresses, along with the hard surfaces (innuendo), their encounters–less sensual than sacrificial–appear to have all the intimacy of bonobos bonding on the nature channel (hosted by Sir David Attenborough).
The pair are played rather aggressively, and with no visible qualms, by two similarly tall, pasty, and angular actors, Richard Armitage and Charley Murphy, who seem somehow related, as if drawn to each other on a deep, subconscious level (yes, go there). Armitage, a usually sensible actor, has one particularly awkward scene (of several), alone on a bed, sniffing the sheets for his lover’s scent, humping pillows like an adolescent schoolboy, or a bonobo, trying, but failing, to out Brando Brando. One can’t help but be embarrassed for this (uncircumcised) 52-year-old. Murphy is as equally embarrassing to watch, attempting, but failing, to generate heat, looking more like someone straining to produce a stool than a woman in paroxysms of ecstasy.
It may be unkind to say, but the British have no business in the business of erotica, even the soft, squishy kind like this. They just don’t have the right sensibility for it. Perhaps it’s the damp. After all, their model of lustful conquest, to whom there’s a statue erected (pun), is Lord Horatio Nelson, who had one eye, one arm, suffered from chronic seasickness, and spent more than half his life at sea with stout-hearted men.
The Brits have a firmer (pun) handle on dissecting the social classes in domestic dramas–the kitchen sink and drawing room kind–like those by Penelope Mortimer and Harold Pinter, than they have on depicting sex, not tepid and warmed over.
