The Girl Before (2021)

Watchseries; I saw the trailer on tv for The girl before and looked really good plus I like Ben Hardy. The first two episodes are very slow and can be a bit boring but does get better as it goes on. It's a very different drama/ thriller but it's very good. The storyline is good and keeps you on the edge of your seat and keeps you guessing from beginning to end with plenty of twist and turns. The 4 part Drama/Thriller is intense and gripping and you will want to just keep watching it. I was certainly hooked. The acting was very good especially from Ben Hardy and David Oyelowo. They both stood out more than the rest of the cast but stilling good acting from the others. Brilliantly directed. Overall a good intense thriller to watch and I really enjoyed it. Give it chance and watch it. Currently streaming on BBC I-PLAYER now full box set. Definitely worth watching.

I saw the trailer on tv for The girl before and looked really good plus I like Ben Hardy. The first two episodes are very slow and can be a bit boring but does get better as it goes on. It's a very different drama/ thriller but it's very good. The storyline is good and keeps you on the edge of your seat and keeps you guessing from beginning to end with plenty of twist and turns. The 4 part Drama/Thriller is intense and gripping and you will want to just keep watching it. I was certainly hooked. The acting was very good especially from Ben Hardy and David Oyelowo. They both stood out more than the rest of the cast but stilling good acting from the others. Brilliantly directed. Overall a good intense thriller to watch and I really enjoyed it. Give it chance and watch it. Currently streaming on BBC I-PLAYER now full box set. Definitely worth watching.

The Girl Before watchseries. I watched to see if they'd changed it much from the book, but it's pretty much exactly the same. It's an interesting story but lack of suspects leads to a predictable ending.

I have to say though this was very well acted by the three leads, but especially Jessica Plummer. I thought her performance in this was absolute perfection. Really well cast, I truly believed her character. She pulled the character of Emma off with ease. Good story, not a great ending but fantastic acting.

This mini series was instantly identifiable as a BBC drama the production and actors were faultless however the story like many of the recent past productions was a let down the mystery and drama of what the story was about was kept at the compromise of a viewers intelligence as in the actions of the participants were so questionable to the point of being far removed from any feasible reality. The ending like so many recent BBC dramas was more of a pooof than the Bang that one would have expected! Sadly far too much of the story was written with the intention to keep the viewer guessing on what the story was about that when revealed the reaction was really is that it!

Series that cares more abut how beautifully filmed than if there's a good story or a cohesive one. It had great potential. A creepy, mysterious house as well as the architect and all the back story. Started out muddled and disjointed. Give us some more back story( since the women look so identical before showing each's separate story lines back and forth, also way too many red herrings and irrelevant stuff. I knew there wasn't much of a story when this went on for episodes. It's not a bad serie just not a well thought out one with a good linear story. Wasn't really a thriller in the end. Just a Series masquerading as one...

As "The Girl Before" (2021 release from the UK; 4 episodes of about an hour each) opens, we get to know a couple of 20-somethings, Simon and Emma, who are considering moving into a minimalist house in London. The architect and builder of the house has very specific rules about what is and isn't appropriate in the house. We then go to "Three Years Later" and a 30-something woman named Jane is now considering moving into that same minimalist house. What the heck happened with the previous couple? Why is the architect of the house acting in such a mysterious way? At this point we are 10 min into Episode 1.

Couple of comments: "The Girl Before" was a NYT bestseller by J. P. Delaney (real name: Anthony Capella) in 2017. The author has now turned the book into a 4 part min-series. For sure, the minimalist house is a character in and of itself, but once we get deep into Episode 1 and then further into Episode 2, there are a number of other layers that are revealed. The series is plot heavy so I'm not going into any further detail. This is a BBC production, and it seems money was no object, with top-notch production sets and eye-candy photography of London. The cast are mostly unknown (on the US side anyway) British actors and actresses. Be aware: at times I missed complete lines of what was said, resulting from the British accents.

"The Girl Before" premiered on BBC in December of 2021, and it premiered stateside earlier this week on HBO Max only (meaning it's not on HBO). In you are in the mood for a slow-burning mystery/psychological drama set in London, I'd readily suggest you check it out, and draw your own conclusion.

This slick, stylised and to be honest, highly improbable four-part BBC thriller nevertheless kept my wife and I intrigued and excited all the way through. Highly reminiscent of the kind of glossy thriller Hollywood might have churned out in the 80's starring a Michael Douglas or Sharon Stone, it centred on an immaculate, high-tech London town-house available for rent but only to the absolutely right tenant. It's owned by a wealthy, successful but reclusive architect who rigorously vets applicants by setting them extensive personal new-age style questionnaires to complete, sets draconian rules to live by and who even conducts a final person interview process before giving them the nod or, given the place has been empty for some three years, more often, a shake of the head.

As we join the action, the story diverges into two separate timelines as we see firstly a young mixed-race couple and then a single black woman separately make it through all the owner's hoops and jumps to finally graduate to picking up the keys, or in this case, bracelet-passes to the swish new property which has every mod-con going including mood lighting and music, sensory-operated showers but, as we discover later, pretty much zero security. More than this though, both the owner and indeed the house itself, have dark secrets which the narrative teases out as both timelines, one present-day for the single girl and the other three years ago for the couple, end up in explosively dramatic conclusions.

It's fair to say that the other lead character in this drama is the house itself, both inside and out. Personally I'm something of a gadget-fiend myself so the idea of a fully automated property has always appealed to me but giving it a HAL-like personality has to be a mistake as we all know where that usually ends up.

After taking a little while to work out the intersecting stories and indeed separate out the two young women who, essentially for the narrative, closely resemble one another, this was a dark tale of obsession and control. I'm not sure I agreed with the domination and manipulation of two obviously emotionally damaged young women by a mysterious but superficially attractive male figure nor was I impressed by the relatively unsympathetic police treatment of a rape victim, but nevertheless my wife and I soon fell into step with with the intricately-plotted double mystery.

Strongly acted by all the principals and atmospherically directed, what it lacked in political correctness and credibility, it made up in vicarious thrills and chills.