The Party: a ‘juicy psychological thriller’

The Party, on ITV1, is “a tale of class division, toxic privilege and cold betrayal”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. Based on Elizabeth Day’s 2017 novel, this “juicy psychological thriller” is about the friendship between Benjamin Fitzmaurice (Tom Cullen), a rising star of the Conservative Party, and working-class outsider Martin Gilmour (Luke Evans).

And it unfolds across three timelines: school and university days, where a tragedy binds the two together; Ben’s birthday bash in the present day, and the aftermath, in which Martin is in a police interview room, bloodied and shaken. “Something terrible happened at the party,” he says, and, over five episodes, we find out exactly what.

The notion of a working-class boy thrust into a world of “glittering hedonism” isn’t exactly fresh, said Ben Dowell in The Times. Alan Hollinghurst’s “The Line of Beauty” covered this ground, as did “Saltburn” more recently. But this drama “sings its own plangent song”, and the series features some “beautiful” performances, too. The young Martin’s awkward Christmas viewing of “Coronation Street” with his mum is “particularly heartbreaking”.

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It’s a shame that the main themes – class, sexuality and repression – are not more forensically explored, said Phil Harrison in The Independent. We never really discover why these two men behave the way they do. A fine supporting cast, meanwhile, feels underused. Still, the series is very entertaining. “It’s not a party you’d want to attend, but it’s one you’ll happily, voyeuristically observe with a shudder.”