Television series

Apple Tree Yard

Emily Watson plays a celebrated geneticist whose one reckless encounter with a stranger spirals into scandal, blackmail and a courtroom reckoning over desire, shame and who gets believed. Tense, intimate and quietly devastating, it's less about the affair itself than what happens after — the slow unpicking of a respectable life. For anyone who wants a British thriller built on moral ambiguity rather than car chases.

TVMaze rating7.6

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Doctor Foster2015

Suranne Jones is magnetic as a doctor whose discovery of her husband's affair detonates her entire life — same terrain of respectability cracking apart, but played as gleeful, vengeful spectacle rather than quiet dread.

But It's broader and pulpier than Apple Tree Yard — less interested in ambiguity, more in the satisfaction of watching someone burn it all down.

Doctor Foster poster

Anatomy of a Scandal2022

A political wife, a courtroom, a marriage built on secrets — this digs into consent, class and who society believes, with the same interest in what a trial does to intimacy.

But The twists lean melodramatic and the politics-world gloss can feel a touch glossy next to Apple Tree Yard's grubbier realism.

Anatomy of a Scandal poster

Big Little Lies2017

Gorgeous, starry, and genuinely interested in what respectable women hide from each other and themselves — trauma and desire simmering under coastal wealth and perfect marriages.

But It's glossier and more soap-operatic, with a murder-mystery hook that Apple Tree Yard never needs.

Big Little Lies poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Brief Encounter1945

Same engine — a respectable person's single reckless choice unravelling a whole life — but decades earlier and stripped of plot, leaving only the ache.

Two respectable strangers fall into a doomed, aching affair in provincial England, told with such restraint that a held glance carries more weight than any confession scene in a modern thriller.

But It's slow, stiff-upper-lip cinema from another era — no thriller mechanics, just devastating English repression.

Brief Encounter poster
More like this (8)

Liar2017

A single disputed night between two people becomes an agonising battle over truth, memory and belief — the same queasy uncertainty about who deserves your sympathy.

But It flirts with implausible thriller mechanics by the finale, trading some of its early credibility for plot.

Liar poster

The Undoing2020

Nicole Kidman's therapist watches her privileged Manhattan life collapse after a death exposes what she didn't know about her marriage — glossy dread, courtroom scenes, a woman reassessing everything she trusted.

But It's more concerned with style and twists than psychological interiority, and the ending divides people.

The Undoing poster

The Affair2014

Told from competing, contradictory points of view, this dissects an infidelity and its fallout across years, obsessed with how differently two people remember the same betrayal.

But Five seasons is a big commitment, and its dual-perspective structure can feel gimmicky before it earns its ambition.

The Affair poster

Gone Girl2014

A marriage curdles into a media circus and a legal nightmare in this sharp, nasty thriller about performance, deception and what we owe each other in a relationship.

But It's colder and more cynical, with a satirical bite Apple Tree Yard never reaches for.

Gone Girl poster

Fatal Attraction1987

The original respectable-life-detonated-by-desire thriller — a married man's brief affair spirals into obsession and danger, still gripping, still influential on everything that followed.

But Its gender politics have aged badly and the villain's portrayal now reads as reductive rather than tragic.

Fatal Attraction poster

Unforgotten2015

A cold case investigation quietly peels back the respectable lives of several suspects, revealing what people have buried to keep their world intact — patient, humane, devastating.

But It's a slower, more procedural pleasure, without the fever of an affair spiralling out of control.

Unforgotten poster

The Staircase2022

Where Apple Tree Yard fictionalises the horror of a trial exposing a private life, this is the real thing — actual testimony, actual stakes, same fascination with what gets said in court.

A real trial, filmed over years, follows a writer accused of killing his wife — an unbearably intimate look at how a marriage's private textures get dragged into court and picked apart.

But It's a slow-moving true documentary with no resolution guaranteed, and the ambiguity may frustrate anyone wanting closure.

The Staircase poster

Basic Instinct1992

Same fear at its core — a woman's sexuality treated as inherently suspicious and dangerous by the men and institutions around her — but cranked up into full pulpy spectacle.

A dangerously smart, sexually confident woman becomes both suspect and object of desire in this trashy, gleefully lurid erotic thriller — pure pulp pleasure with real bite underneath.

But It's exploitative, dated and unapologetically trashy where Apple Tree Yard is restrained — a very different, much sleazier register.

Basic Instinct poster

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