Netflix review: Gypsy wanders and gets nowhere

Naomi Watts, right, and co-star Sophie Cookson in Gypsy.

Greg Bruce reviews two new series with female leads.

Netflix's hottest new original series, for June at least, is a psychological thriller called Gypsy, starring Naomi Watts as a therapist who starts messing around in the lives of her patients and, oh Lord, why is nothing happening?

The show has a strong premise, Watts is a fantastic actor, everything is in place for a great new series of captivating prestige television from the company that is the driving force behind the new wave of prestige television and next thing you realise, two hours of your life are gone and all you have to show for it is a desperate desire for something to happen.

The first two episodes see Watts' character Jean in: scenes of relative domestic harmony with her husband; scenes of relatively normal therapist-client interactions; discussions with her colleagues in a meeting room; and, eventually, potentially erotic and career-damaging interactions with a young woman who used to be in a relationship with one of her patients.

The last of those scenes sounds promising, obviously, in terms of the potential complications, and you can feel the show reaching for grand and complex themes around it all: personal boundaries, desire, love, career suicide, but when - for the love of God - is any of the potential going to be realised?

Even worse, because we don't really find out anything of substance about Jean's life and its values in those opening episodes, her needs and desires, we find it particularly difficult to care about the things that aren't happening to her.

There are eight more episodes, and the show has the potential to get much better, but the question is, will anyone still be watching?

Writer and executive producer Lisa Rubin said in an article in the Guardian this month: "I really wanted the relationship between Jean and Sidney [the 20-something barista Jean finds herself drawn to] to unfold slowly.

"I didn't want us to just jump straight in with a sex scene. There is something romantic about longing [and] something sexy about the tease, about thinking about what might happen rather than seeing it straight away."

The excellent Apple Tree Yard, which started on TVNZ 1 last Sunday, and continues for the next three weeks, also features a strong, middle-aged female protagonist (Emily Watson) being unfaithful to her husband. There is no mucking around in Apple Tree Yard. The first instance of extra-marital sex happens about five minutes in, without any teasing, and the romping continues, only occasionally abated, for most of the first episode.

But that's not what makes the show so good to watch. Even before the first episode's shocking and horrific end, it has brought us to an understanding of who Emily Watson's character is - her insecurities, her disappointments, her needs, her passions, the jeopardy she's in - and as a result we can't wait for episode two.

By the end of the second episode of Gypsy, all we really know about Naomi Watts' character is that she's not a very responsible therapist, and as a result we can't wait for episode two of Apple Tree Yard.