Television series

The Nest

Name: The Nest
Genre: Drama
Released: 2020
Cast: Sophie Rundle, Martin Compston, Mirren Mack, Fiona Bell, Liz Ewing

Other titles called The Nest: the 1988 film, the 2020 film.

Drama

A tense domestic drama about a wealthy Glasgow couple and the young surrogate mother they hire, following the fractures that open when desire, desperation, and class collide. Sophie Rundle and Martin Compston navigate an increasingly claustrophobic situation with crackling chemistry. Expertly plotted and psychologically messy—less about answers than the slow erosion of everyone's certainty.

TVMaze rating

2.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like domestic dramas where money and class press on intimate choices, and you enjoy a slow-coiling unease that makes you question every kind motive on screen.

Skip it if you need characters you can root for outright, since nearly everyone here is compromised, and the pace is measured across five one-hour episodes.

What it asks of you: Five hour-long episodes with a patient, watchful pace; you'll need to stay alert to small glances and remarks, because the tension builds quietly rather than arriving in set pieces.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Bodyguard2018

The same BBC precision and propulsive tension, but here turned on intimate relationships and the lies that corrode them. Jed Mercurio understands how quickly trust can shatter, and how much damage people can do to each other at close range.

But If you've seen it, you might find the cat-and-mouse dynamic familiar. Some find the plotting occasionally too tidy for real life.

The Fall2013

Stella Gibson's moral certainty fractures when she realizes how little she actually understands about the people she thought she knew. It's an obsessive cat-and-mouse with nobody quite who they seem, and it grips you by the throat.

But The violence can be gratuitous and the gender dynamics sometimes uncomfortable. It also demands patience with long, slow stalking sequences.

Liar2017

A sexual assault accusation explodes a comfortable suburban marriage into wreckage. Like The Nest, it's about how quickly intimacy can turn into a weapon, and how perspective matters more than truth.

But The back-and-forth narrative can feel manipulative after a while. Some plot threads don't land as neatly as others.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Nest

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Under the Skin2014

Both treat the setup—a transaction between two parties—as the beginning of psychological horror, not the resolution. Both ask what happens when one person sees through the other's mask.

A science fiction horror about predation and what we owe strangers. Like The Nest, it's obsessed with the space between what people pretend to be and what they actually want. Haunting, unsettling, and deeply strange.

But There's barely any dialogue. It's slow, abstract, and asks you to sit with discomfort rather than resolve it. Scarlett Johansson's performance is deliberately opaque.

Fleabag2016

Similar class anxieties and precariousness hidden under a veneer of charm. Sophie Rundle plays a woman drowning in expectations, and the show has that same dark comedy underneath genuine emotional devastation.

But The tone whipsaws constantly between farcical and heartbreaking. That won't work for everyone.

The Affair2014

Infidelity told from multiple perspectives, each one contradicting the others. It captures how self-deception lets people justify almost anything, and how desire rewrites memory itself.

But After the first season it becomes somewhat repetitive. The shifting perspectives can feel gimmicky if you're not invested in the specific people.

MINDHUNTER2017

Federal agents trying to understand monsters, but the real tension is the psychological games between the investigators themselves. It's about power, manipulation, and what you're willing to do to get inside someone's head.

But It's slow and deliberately unglamorous. There's no cathartic ending, and it might feel like a lot of talking for not much payoff.

Mare of Easttown2021

A detective drama where the real mystery isn't the crime but the web of lies and secrets a community uses to protect itself. Kate Winslet commands every scene with exhausted fury.

But Relentlessly bleak and full of hardship. The accent takes some adjusting to. It's not comfort viewing.

His Dark Materials2019

A family drama wrapped in fantasy, where the central conflict is a couple willing to do anything—including terrible things—for their child. The emotional core mirrors The Nest's exploration of how love can become obsession.

But The fantasy elements can feel tacked on. Some find the child actors uneven, and the CGI doesn't always convince.

Gomorra: La Serie2014

A Neapolitan crime drama that treats power, loyalty, and betrayal with Shakespearean weight. It shows how quickly any pact—any arrangement built on self-interest—can become mutually assured destruction.

But Subtitled, brutally violent, and genuinely hard to follow at times. It rewards close attention but punishes distraction.

Kajaki2014

Both understand that when people are trapped together, everyone becomes a threat to everyone else. Niceness and good intentions don't survive proximity.

A low-budget British military film about soldiers in an impossible situation, where the real enemy becomes the bonds between the men themselves. It has The Nest's claustrophobia and its understanding that desperation makes people monstrous.

But It's genuinely difficult to watch—gruesome, slow, and offers no comfort. Some find it overly committed to suffering for its own sake.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer2017

Both feature meticulously intelligent characters slowly realizing they've already lost the game. Both suggest that the person you bring into your home might be playing a game you don't understand.

A surgeon and his family are destroyed by a quiet, intelligent teenager who appears in their lives with a hidden agenda. It has The Nest's fixation on how quickly power dynamics can flip, and how vulnerability can weaponize.

But It's deliberately cold and artificial. Some find it pretentious or unmoved by its own cruelty. The pacing is maddening if you want plot momentum.