Television series

Doctor Foster

Name: Doctor Foster
Genre: Drama, Medical
Released: 2015
Cast: Suranne Jones, Bertie Carvel, Tom Taylor, Thusita Jayasundera, Clare-Hope Ashitey

A GP's tidy, capable life curdles the moment she catches a whiff of her husband's affair, and she starts pulling threads until the whole marriage unravels in her hands. It's less whodunit than how-far-will-she-go, anchored by Suranne Jones playing controlled fury like a scalpel. Gripping, uncomfortable, occasionally gasp-out-loud vicious — for anyone who likes their domestic drama with teeth.

TVMaze rating

7.7

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Cheat2019

A quieter, more surgical study of a woman convinced someone close to her is lying, with the same slow-burn dread and a career-woman protagonist whose control starts slipping in public.

But Only four episodes, so the psychological chess game ends before it fully escalates — it's a sketch next to Foster's full portrait.

Liar2017

A first date that ends in a rape accusation splits a small town into camps, and the show keeps flipping who you believe — brilliant if you liked doubting everyone in Foster.

But The twists eventually tip from clever into faintly ridiculous, and the second series pushes credulity further than the first.

Apple Tree Yard2017

Emily Watson is superb as a respectable scientist whose affair detonates her whole life in a courtroom drama that's just as interested in shame and desire as Foster is in rage.

But It's a slower burn, more interior and legalistic, without the pulpy momentum that makes Foster so compulsively watchable.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Staircase2022

Same forensic dismantling of a marriage's secrets that Foster fictionalises, except this is a documentary, so the uncertainty and dread are unresolved and permanent.

A real marriage, filmed as it's picked apart in real time by lawyers and journalists after a wife is found dead at the bottom of the stairs — betrayal and suspicion with nowhere to hide, because it actually happened.

But No script, no catharsis, no neat ending — just years of ambiguous, exhausting reality, which some viewers find more frustrating than gripping.

Big Little Lies2017

Glossy, starry, and furious underneath the beach-house prettiness — another story of women in privileged suburbs discovering how much rot a marriage can hide.

But The mystery framing is thinner than the character work, and the ending resolves more neatly than the messy build-up promises.

The Affair2014

Tells the same betrayal from both spouses' perspectives, contradicting each other in small cruel details — a formal trick that deepens exactly the kind of he-said-she-said Foster thrives on.

But Runs five seasons and drifts well past the original affair into territory that loses some of what made it sharp.

Gone Girl2014

The gold standard for marriage-as-warfare thrillers — a wife who turns humiliation into a plan, and a film that makes you complicit in loving how far she takes it.

But Its coldness and total command are the opposite of Foster's messy, human unravelling — this is control, not chaos.

The Fall2013

Swaps the cheating husband for a serial killer, but keeps the same clenched, watchful tone and a lead detective, played by Gillian Anderson, who's every bit as formidable as Gemma Foster.

But It's a straight crime thriller rather than a domestic drama, so the marital wreckage that drives Foster isn't really here.

Unfaithful2002

A slow, sensual, then devastating look at what an affair actually does to a comfortable marriage, with Diane Lane superb as a woman undone by her own choices.

But It's a two-hour film, so there's none of the sprawling escalation and community fallout that give Foster its addictive length.

Trust Me2017no page yet

Another BBC drama about a woman's careful life collapsing under a lie, this time a nurse assuming a false identity — same nervy tension, different kind of deception.

But The premise is more implausible than Foster's grounded betrayal, and it leans harder into thriller mechanics than character.

Medea1969no page yet

Gemma Foster is Medea in a Volvo — this is the same story of a wronged wife's escalating fury, stripped back to its oldest, harshest form.

Pasolini's stark, near-wordless retelling of the ancient myth about a woman destroyed by her husband's betrayal and what she chooses to do about it — mythic, ritualistic, genuinely frightening.

But Glacially slow, deliberately alienating, and closer to ritual theatre than drama — nothing like the propulsive pace of a modern TV thriller.

Revenge2011

Takes Foster's engine of a woman weaponising patience and humiliation into a plan, and cranks the register from prestige drama into gleeful, unapologetic trash.

A woman with a hidden identity infiltrates a wealthy community to destroy the people who wronged her family, one soapy, delicious scheme at a time, in the Hamptons instead of a quiet English town.

But It's pure network soap — glossy, silly, occasionally camp — with none of Foster's psychological texture or moral discomfort.