Critique: Close to Me

Jo fell down the stairs and lost an entire year of memories. This series follows Jo as she reclaims her past and remembers the night of the accident.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

On multiple occasions, the scenes are unusual yet remarkably brilliant.

One of the first scenes is of Jo being wheeled in a hospital bed through a fancy party. The necessity of health care being paired with the frivolity of a party is such an odd pairing that the audience can’t help paying attention.

At the end of the first episode, Jo had a beach hallucination, seeing a shoal of mermaids had beached themselves. Really quite unusual. Mermaids are the only bit on animation and whilst rarely used they’re used well.

Whilst it’s neither brilliant nor unusual as a piece of film, I did think this next bit was brilliant despite being unusual as a life hack. Jo and her friend had a dinner plate full of jelly sweets. That’s excellent.

 

Whilst the show itself was dark, there were a fair few bits of humour thrown into it.

An early scene is of the doctor telling Rob that Jo may never recover her memories. So Jo pipes up, “I can hear you! It’s a curtain, not a fucking wall.”

Jo asks her gardener if they’re close and he replies, “Well I’ve handled your lobelia.” So funny.

Someone tries to rob Jo. At first I thought it was a hallucination (bad things so far had been hallucinations) but surprisingly it was real. Jo responds by whacking the mugger with her crutch over and over again. I’m not fond of violence but this scene did rather tickle me.

At Jo’s support group, a lady called Helen repeatedly introduces herself with a joke about working in a coffee shop and being fed up of the daily grind. Jo’s response? “Imagine being stuck inside that shit joke for the rest of your life.”

A funny bit of inner monologue happens as Jo gets into a car. ‘I’m going to Hell anyway. Taking out the odd pedestrian won’t make much of a difference at this stage.’ One, I had to pause the show because I laughed so hard. Two, the ‘at this stage’ is unnecessary.

At the fundraiser for the refugees, Rob’s speech thanks everyone, finishing with, “And thank you to the people who use this centre who we’ve seemed to forgot to invite.” That has to be the funniest line in this show.

 

Several times, Jo’s inner monologue comes up with heart-wrenching statements.

Jo refuses to take her medication, deciding it’s better to be in pain than confused. Meds can confuse you and if someone’s as confused as Jo already was, I can see how they’d come to that conclusion. But to be in that situation, where you have to choose pain and clear thoughts or less pan and foggy thoughts, is awful.

She describes the confusion in her head in an excellent way. ‘It’s like someone came in and trashed the place and now I can’t find anything.’

The one that hit me the hardest was ‘I don’t feel safe inside my own head’. To lack a safe environment is bad enough, but to not have safety in yourself? It’s a horrible sensation and not one to wish upon anyone.

‘How many bad things do you have to do before you become a bad person?’ Just sit back and think about that one.

 

At times, Jo’s behaviour is questionable. Not surprising for someone who suffered as badly as she did but it still seemed problematic.

Jo vomits into and then flushes the toilet. Nothing wrong with that. But then she doesn’t wash her hands afterwards. Considering all the dirty jobs people do before they flush the loo, why don’t people wash their hands after touching the flusher? Disgusting.

Several times Jo has arguments at the top of the stairs. In the place that caused all your issues, Jo! Yes being there helps you remember but is it worth it when you could lose even more?

 

Jo’s husband Rob is such a dick.

He’s definitely more controlling than protecting. Seeing him throw Jo’s phone into the river cements his guilt.  We learn it’s because Jo was going to break up with him before the fall yet Rob wanted another shot at his marriage. That’s so wrong.

He told lies so as not to overwhelm Jo all at once. But they soon catch up with him, especially the lies he tells to protect himself rather than her.

When Jo realises there was someone else in the house the night she fell, Rob goes ballistic and takes her to the police. Clearly the police won’t believe her because she’s hazy and medically has lost her memories. Maybe that’s the point, for Rob to get out of the firing line.

 

Other good elements are as followed.

Rob’s mistress suggests to Rob to get a loan from Jo, Rob’s wife. The mistress works at the company that needs to loan so she’s using Jo to her full advantage. Now the mistress isn’t the one at fault, it’s the cheater, but there’s no need for the mistress to kick the wife in the teeth.

Episode Five cuts off right before Jo falls down the stairs. Urgh! Such good suspense. (Obviously I wish I had the answer straight away but it’s at that point that you know the suspense works.)

Jo finally remembers the night of the fall. She confronted Rob for being a cheater and decided to leave him. She tells him to not blame her ‘for your wandering dick’ (too right). Then we see Jo start to fall down the stairs but Rob catches her. Then we see Rob let her go. The show leads you up to know Rob pushed her but then it reveals this?! Somehow this seems so much worse than if Rob had pushed her down the stairs.

 

On occasion, there are events that let the show down.

Jo runs over a fox and picks it up straight away. It’s stiff but rigor mortis wouldn’t have set in that quickly. She picks it back up later, when rigor mortis would have set in, yet it’s all floppy. That was rather weird.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Wendy, the lady with the Dobermans. Each time she sees Jo it’s like she has a different personality.

Twenty per cent of the time Jo says ‘fuck’ or ‘fucking’, it seems really unnatural. It doesn’t flow with the words or the sentence, as if it’s shoehorned in.

 

This show was thought provoking.

It literally demonstrates what can go wrong if you put your life into the hands of the wrong person. But you’ll only ever know they’re the wrong person to be trusted when they do something wrong. Trust is a beautiful gift but it’s open to corruption.

The adverts portrayed the programme as a dysfunctional family. Which it was. But that wasn’t what the show was about. If the adverts had truly reflected the show, I would have been eager to watch it. But with things as they stood, it made for a nice surprise. Hardly any programmes deal with memory loss and how this befuddled confusion affects the individual so this was fantastic.