Wilderness review: a soapy drama set in the American southwest

Most people who discover their husband is a "cheating slimeball" choose one of two options, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. "If they've got any sense, they chuck him out; or they stay in the marriage, which becomes a hotbed of festering resentment." But characters in TV thrillers "don't behave like normal people". 

In the new Amazon Prime Video drama "Wilderness", British couple Liv (Jenna Coleman) and Will (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) are living a glamorous life in New York for his work, when she discovers that he is having an affair with a colleague "who wears thongs with all the coverage of dental floss". Does she "hightail it back to Britain and tell the duplicitous, gaslighting Will to sling his hook? She does not." 

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Instead, she accepts his offer of a conciliatory road-trip to the American southwest, thinking she'll seize the opportunity to do him in. But her plots fail, and then the couple find themselves bumping into the other woman (Ashley Benson), who happens to be holidaying in the same wilderness. "What are the chances?" Still, "the stage is set for a murder". 

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"Wilderness" is "not about subtlety", said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. It is about the "most ancient form of entertainment – revenge and catharsis", and "shifting around beneath the action are a lot of on-message messages about female oppression". Adapted from B.E. Jones's thriller, the drama is "full of twists", said Morgan Cormack in Radio Times, and even if it's not totally convincing, it is at least "soapy in all the right places".