Television's relationship with the erotic thriller is complicated. The eroto-thriller is a cheap and easy genre to produce. Also one that has it extremely difficult to exist beyond two expressions that are as humorous as they are useful: "guilty pleasure" and "gives for straw." To Obsession, a miniseries recently released by Netflix, we can apply both. Also a third: how bad it is. This adaptation of a Josephine Hart novel is churro and nonsense.
Audiovisual eroticism is not a genre, but a tone. It can lead to dramas, satires or thrillers. But human beings are so lazy that we end up lumping together masterpieces like Basic Instinct (yes: masterpiece) with slops like the damn 50 Shades of Grey. In Obsession there are traces of both, but also (press the males) allusions to Herida or Last Tango in Paris.
The father-son-lover trio proposed by the series takes us to the uncomfortable film by Louis Malle; the relationship between two sides of that triangle transports us to the nihilistic sexual pact between Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider in Bertolucci's film. But 50 Shades of Gray is closer and Obsession knows it. So your target audience will see William (Richard Armitage) and Anna (Charlie Murphy) as more derivatives of the tacky Christian Gray and absurd Anastasia than reflections of the desperate lovers of Last Tango. It is the sign of the times. And it is very sad.
As sad as contemplating the commitment with which the protagonists of the series give themselves to characters lacking in all authenticity. Both Armitage and Murphy lend themselves to dialogues and scenes that walk the fine line between wild eroticism and the most ridiculous jerk off. This is a characteristic of all erotic thrillers and that is why there are so few good ones and so many painful ones. Obsession belongs to this second group. His sex, nothing appetizing, is neither kamikaze like Malle's, nor bleakly nihilistic like Bertolucci's or aspirational (yes: aspirational) like Basic Instinct's. On the other hand, it is indebted to that of many other series and films from the Netflix catalog, aimed at quickly warming up undemanding staff.
Productions that, if we trust how the platform treats them, are very profitable. Hits that make filthy compatible with a very specific sanctimoniousness. Obsessed with not being misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and truly provocative, eroto-thrillers have lost their joyous and scandalous spirit to become simple displays of supposedly appetizing bodies. Those of Richard Armitage and Charlie Murphy are, but they would be more so under the orders of Paul Verhoeven, Adrian Lyne or, why not, Bigas Luna.
That would give Obsession options to have its own personality and be more than just a fool about people who turn their sexual drives into very careful dramas. Television keeps trying and failing with the erotic thriller. From the Spanish Instinct to Obsession, going through Sexo/Vida, it doesn't finish finding the G-spot for the genre.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
