{"id":213569,"date":"2023-08-26T06:53:30","date_gmt":"2023-08-26T06:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bestwnews.com\/?p=213569"},"modified":"2023-08-26T06:53:30","modified_gmt":"2023-08-26T06:53:30","slug":"a-mother-tries-to-stop-an-ex-from-wreaking-havoc-in-new-bbc-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bestwnews.com\/celebrities\/a-mother-tries-to-stop-an-ex-from-wreaking-havoc-in-new-bbc-drama\/","title":{"rendered":"A mother tries to stop an ex from wreaking havoc in new BBC drama"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Who&#8217;s conning who?: A mother tries to stop the ex who fleeced her from wreaking havoc on another woman\u2019s life in a new BBC drama. But all is not as it seems<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The Following Events Are Based On A Pack Of Lies was filmed in Oxfordshire\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>READ MORE:\u00a0BBC viewers slam new crime thriller Wolf as &#8216;appalling crud&#8217;\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>From Charles Ponzi and his eponymous pyramid schemes to Frank Abagnale, whose audacious scams were immortalised in the Spielberg film Catch Me If You Can, smooth-talking conmen have long been the subject of public fascination.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now new BBC1 drama The Following Events Are Based On A Pack Of Lies, with Hollywood stars Romola Garai and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, tells the tale of a similar chancer and the devastation he leaves in his wake.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But as the title of the drama suggests, nothing is exactly as it seems.<\/p>\n<p>When we first meet Alice Newman (Pulling\u2019s Rebekah Staton) she appears to be living a settled life.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Happily ensconced in Oxford with her young son and magician boyfriend Benjy (Julian Barratt of The Mighty Boosh comedy act), she works as a PA to Romola Garai\u2019s fashion designer Juno Fish, while harbouring dreams of becoming a designer herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Until, that is, a chance sighting of her former husband knocks her off course.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/08\/22\/17\/74604925-12433067-image-m-76_1692721982430.jpg\" height=\"523\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>New BBC1 drama The Following Events Are Based On A Pack Of Lies stars Hollywood stars Romola Garai and Marianne Jean-Baptiste<\/p>\n<p>Alice believed Robbie Graham (Sex Education\u2019s Alistair Petrie), a property developer from Stoke, to be her \u2018knight in shining armour\u2019 right up to the point he fleeced her and her family out of their savings and fled \u2013 popping out for a chow mein, never to return.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now, 15 years later, he\u2019s back, but this time as Dr Rob Chance \u2013 a charming, award-winning \u2018ecopreneur\u2019 and director of the \u2018world-famous\u2019 Saattut climate academy in Greenland.<\/p>\n<p>Soon Alice discovers he has lined up his latest victim, wealthy fantasy writer Cheryl Harker (Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Oscar-nominated for the film Secrets &amp; Lies), who has recently lost her husband to dementia.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Alice intends to warn Cheryl about Rob\u2019s past, but fearing she won\u2019t be believed she pretends to be her successful boss Juno instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As the five-part series unfolds, Alice attempts to stop her ex from wreaking havoc on another woman\u2019s life, but will she succeed&#8230; and who exactly is being tricked?<\/p>\n<p>Created by sisters Penelope and Ginny Skinner, the series offers a novel take on the traditional conman caper.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018We love those shows where you have a con artist who\u2019s doing crazy, exciting things,\u2019 says Ginny. \u2018But for our story we wanted the hero to be the person the con was happening to.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Adds her sister, \u2018It happened to Alice many years ago, but she\u2019s still living with the consequences and we wanted to recognise the damage these things do to the victims and put their perspective front and centre.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;But the problem is that these conmen are so fascinating you can easily be drawn into their lies.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s certainly true of Rob, who quickly inveigles himself into Cheryl\u2019s world \u2013 becoming her lover, moving into her sumptuous home and slowly distancing her from those she loves.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018He\u2019s highly emotionally intelligent because that\u2019s how he infiltrates people\u2019s lives, by playing on emotion,\u2019 says Alistair Petrie. \u2018And Cheryl is the perfect target \u2013 a woman who\u2019s widowed and lost.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s a dangerous individual, brimming with confidence, ready to seduce. And then this brilliant spanner in the works appears in the form of Alice.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Rebekah Staton says her character \u2018is living a half-life. She can\u2019t marry Benjy because she can\u2019t tell him her feelings about marriage, and she can\u2019t depend on her dad because she\u2019s protected him from a lot of what happened.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And though her motives to unmask Rob might be honourable, not only does she bend the rules in order to catch him, she also lies about her identity to Cheryl, thereby adopting the traits of the man she\u2019s determined to expose.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018One of the things we discovered in our research is that to encounter a con artist is to be compromised,\u2019 says Ginny.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018That no matter how high your ideals or how good a person you are, as soon as you\u2019re in their sphere, part of you will be morally compromised and you have to make decisions you don\u2019t want to make.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>For real-life conman inspiration, the Skinners looked predominantly to Bernie Madoff \u2013 the American financier who defrauded investors out of billions of dollars in the largest Ponzi scheme in history.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018What was really fascinating about him is that we think people just lost money,\u2019 says Ginny.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018But then you find out about the lives he destroyed. It was very applicable to this show.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>There are also echoes of the tragic tale of Helen Bailey, the children\u2019s author who was charmed and subsequently murdered by her partner Ian Stewart in Hertfordshire.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She, like Cheryl, was a wealthy author mourning the loss of her husband when Stewart came along.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/08\/23\/18\/74604929-12433067-Alice_discovers_he_has_lined_up_his_latest_victim_wealthy_fantas-m-6_1692810628692.jpg\" height=\"851\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Alice discovers he has lined up his latest victim, wealthy fantasy writer Cheryl Harker (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), who has recently lost her husband to dementia<\/p>\n<p>\u2018We didn\u2019t find out about her till we started writing,\u2019 says Ginny, \u2018but there\u2019s a sadness about that story that helped us a lot.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Like countless hustlers before him, Rob knows just how to ensnare and gaslight his prey. \u2018In the beginning there\u2019s the selection of the victim and their particular vulnerability,\u2019 says Penelope.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Then the love bombing, where they\u2019ll offer you something, whether romance or a financial opportunity, that feels like it would solve all your problems.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Soon the victim is isolated from everyone they trust and by the time they realise they\u2019re no longer in control there is the fear, says Ginny, that if they pull out they would lose more than if they stay in.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Added to that is the disbelief from others that anyone could ever fall for the con.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018But that\u2019s the \u201cartist\u201d part of the con artist,\u2019 explains Alistair. \u2018Because it\u2019s all based on emotion. Nobody wants to admit they\u2019ve been fooled.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>While the show has its dark moments, especially midway through during a shocking exchange between Rob and Alice (\u2018there\u2019s no denying how dangerous he is after that,\u2019 says Rebekah), there\u2019s also plenty of humour.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Alice flits about town investigating Rob while wearing a somewhat conspicuous neon pink cape.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And as her father trundles along on his mobility scooter collecting evidence of Rob\u2019s misconduct for his daughter, he becomes an unlikely and increasingly spry sidekick.<\/p>\n<p>Despite being set in modern-day Oxford, the series has a distinct 1980s feel courtesy of the pulsating soundtrack, including Madonna and Talk Talk, and veiled references to that ultimate 80s movie Fatal Attraction.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Part of Alice\u2019s internal crisis is that she\u2019ll be perceived as a crazy bunny boiler if she tells the truth about Rob, and that film was a symbol of that,\u2019 says Penelope.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The use of 80s music is a way of showing how her past is coming back,\u2019 adds her sister.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a knotty tale with a complicated heroine, and the heightened sights and sounds of the show add to the viewer\u2019s unease.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Alice\u2019s partner Benjy is a magician who tells you he\u2019s playing a trick on you, while Cheryl creates alternative worlds that you know you\u2019re spending time in,\u2019 explains Penelope.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Rob does both of these things without telling you and that\u2019s very damaging. We all want to experience magic, be transported, fall in love, but it\u2019s our goodness and empathy that\u2019s being exploited by the likes of Rob.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Making the show caused everyone involved to re-examine their past for occasions when they\u2019d been unwittingly conned. \u2018I think all of us at some point have been manipulated in some shape,\u2019 says Alistair.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And for those who still believe they could never fall prey to such manipulation, the series itself performs its own trickery.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It\u2019s very seductive,\u2019 says Alistair. \u2018There\u2019s a warmth and humour to it that brings you in. We relax the audience&#8230; and then we turn the screw.\u2019<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Following Events Are Based On A Pack Of Lies starts Tuesday at 9pm on BBC1, all episodes on BBC iPlayer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/tvshowbiz\/article-12433067\/Whos-conning-mother-tries-stop-ex-fleeced-wreaking-havoc-womans-life-new-BBC-drama-not-seems.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who&#8217;s conning who?: A mother tries to stop the ex who fleeced her from wreaking havoc on another woman\u2019s life in a new BBC drama. But all is not as it seems The Following Events Are Based On A Pack Of Lies was filmed in Oxfordshire\u00a0 READ MORE:\u00a0BBC viewers slam new crime thriller Wolf as &#8216;appalling crud&#8217;\u00a0 From Charles Ponzi [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A mother tries to stop an ex from wreaking havoc in new BBC drama - Best World News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bestwnews.com\/celebrities\/a-mother-tries-to-stop-an-ex-from-wreaking-havoc-in-new-bbc-drama\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A mother tries to stop an ex from wreaking havoc in new BBC drama - Best World News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Who&#8217;s conning who?: A mother tries to stop the ex who fleeced her from wreaking havoc on another woman\u2019s life in a new BBC drama. 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