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Have you ever had a problem with your neighbors? Did it spiral into something completely out of control? That’s the premise of a new Acorn TV series, The Feud On Sheulbury Drive.
THE FEUD ON SHELBURY DRIVE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Three “FOR SALE” signs are up in front of three adjacent row homes on Shelbury Drive, in a British suburb.
The Gist: A man tours one of the homes, sees an unfinished kitchen, and evidence that there was violence in the house. He asks the real estate agent if whoever died in the house was murdered, which the agent sidesteps. Across the street, a woman looks intently at the interaction.
A month earlier, that woman, Emma Barnett (Jill Halfpenny) is in her kitchen, and her husband John (Rupert Penry-Jones) is bringing out sausage rolls for the annual Shelbury Drive block party. Emma and John are getting serious about moving with their teenage daughter Beth (Megan Trower), but it seems to be regretting the decision.
She’s been taking on a lot of work as a defense barrister, and John hasn’t been working since he quit his job, and would rather stay and expand their kitchen instead of move. Also, she loves the neighborhood and her neighbors — especially Sonia and Alan Spence (Amy Nuttall, Ray Fearon), who are good friends. During the block party, she tells John that she doesn’t want to move. John, already feeling the pinch of not being the breadwinner in the family anymore, doesn’t feel great about the prospect.
As Emma starts getting estimates on the expansion work, she informs the neighbors on either side, who have to buy in because of the shared walls. While the Spences are fine with it, the other neighbors, Derek and Barbara Abshire (James Fleet, Tessa Peake-Jones), aren’t. Despite the addition only being one floor and taking up about 12 feet of space, the Abshires think it will disrupt their garden, especially the tree they planted in tribute to their son Marcus (Luke Hammond), who disappeared when he was in his 20s. John sees Barbara overwatering that tree every day, often sobbing while doing so.
John really thinks Emma should leave well enough alone and not do the expansion, but she plows forward, knowing that the law is on her side. She even gets her father Terry (Larry Lamb), who has some influence in the town, to shepherd it through the planning board.
Things are starting to get dark, though, as Emma gets threatened by a patrol cop named Gallagher (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), who was suspended after Emma exposes the racism she exposed one of her clients to. She also suspects that John and Beth are more than just neighbors and friends.
Photo: Acorn TVWhat Shows Will It Remind You Of? Written by Aschlin Ditta, The Feud On Shelbury Drive (which goes by the simpler title The Feud in the UK and elsewhere) has elements of The ‘Burbs and Coldwater mixed with the creepiness of the recent HBO docuseries Neighbors.
Our Take: The first episode of The Feud On Shelbury Drive does a good job of setting up all of the “suburban secrets” in the first episode. The Barnetts aren’t happy because John is feeling emasculated in the face of his joblessness and Emma bringing in more money than ever; but even when they were more equal in terms of income, Emma never thought John could make bold decisions. The Spences show a happy face, but there’s tension over them never having children, among other things. And the Abshires continue to mourn the fact that their son vanished decades prior.
That third thing is a big source of the tension that is at the root of this feud. The Abshires are older, and they already seem to lament the changes that have come to their previously idyllic neighborhood, so that’s part of why they don’t want Emma’s expansion plans to go through. But John and others wonder just what or who is buried under that tiny tree that Barbara waters to death.
There is also the matter of Beth, who is taking pictures of everything for a school project she calls “My Prison”; she’s finding secrets just by training her phone on neighbors’ rear windows. And then there’s Nick Hewitt (Alex Macqueen) a weird loner who lives across the street, complains about vans parked too long on the curb and has security cameras trained all over the place.
All of these elements show how a seemingly innocuous dispute over a kitchen expansion can spiral into what we see a month later: Three houses for sale, with one smeared in blood. What Ditta is trying to show is that, while Emma may be technically in the right about her ability to get the extension done, her determination to get it done coincides with how much of a bulldog she is defending her often sketchy clients. As John keeps telling her, she doesn’t want to leave well enough alone, and that bulldog nature of hers is what opens up the Pandora’s box of neighborhood secrets. It’s an interesting dynamic that almost seems could happen in real life.
Photo: Acorn TVPerformance Worth Watching: Jill Halfpenny plays Emma Barnett as someone who is both warm and snarly, righteous and determined at the same time.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Emma notices something in one of Nick’s surveillance videos posted on a neighborhood web site, and it’s not good.
Sleeper Star: Alex Macqueen is appropriately weird as Nick, but his cameras are likely going to be the key to inflaming this feud beyond all reason.
Most Pilot-y Line: In a scene where Beth sits in a tree and takes pictures with her phone into the neighbors’ back windows (as well as the back window of her own house), she looks like she has her finger partially over the lens of the phone’s camera. Maybe it was just the angle.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Feud On Shelbury Drive does a fine job of spinning what seems to be a small dispute into a thriller that anyone who has an issue with their neighbors can relate to.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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