Mrs. Wilson review: Ruth Wilson, Iain Glen, Anupam Kher impress in intriguing saga of a spy who led too many lives

Language: English Mrs. Wilson is a spy thriller based on real life. The generic description would seem quite regular for a limited series, unless you consider the protagonists lending outrageous plot material to the story happen to be the lead star’s grandparents. The fact gives the storyline a tragic emotional core, as actress and executive producer Ruth Wilson sets out to lay bare the shocking life of her grandfather Alexander Wilson, or Alec, through the eyes of her grandmother Alison. Their story is entertaining despite the dark, sadder edges, unravelling against a backdrop of adventure and brimming with mush, melodrama, and mystery. It brings the action to the Indian subcontinent too, to set up essential exotica for the Western audience. Alec Wilson was an English novelist and MI6 agent who wrote bestselling spy stories under various names, including Alexander Wilson, Geoffrey Spencer, and Michael Chesney. About a decade ago, he was in the spotlight when author Tom Crook published his book, The Secret Lives Of A Secret Agent: The Mysterious Life And Times Of Alexander Wilson. The new Ruth Wilson-toplined series aims at adding a personal touch to the murky saga, looking at the scar Alec’s life and lifestyle left on his kin after his death. As the pilot opens, Alec Wilson [played by Iain Glen] dies of heart attack leaving his wife Alison [Ruth Wilson] shattered. Alison’s sorrow turns into shock even before Alec is buried, when a woman comes calling at her door, and claims she is Mrs Wilson. As Alison sets out to prove the legitimacy of her marriage, she literally opens the can of worms on her dead husband. She discovers Alec had bizarrely led parallel lives. Not only was his life story built around a web of lies, it emerges that Alec was also a serial polygamist, and had fathered children from other marriages too. It is a limited series of three episodes with a runtime of around 56 minutes each, with a story that can be easily pre-empted. However, along with the story it tells, the show is also about how the story is told. Mrs. Wilson keeps the twists and tension coming in at a uniform pace. The show maintains the statutory “inspired by true events” card at the start of every episode, underlining that creative liberties have been taken. The insider inputs coming from Ruth seem obvious all along, and series director Richard Laxton and writer Anna Symon have used these credibly, adding a psychological subtext while analysing a figure already well known. At the same time, you spot an effort to leave a comment or two on Britain of the 1960s, the era in which the story is based, as well as the ruthlessness of the British Foreign Office while dealing with its own.

The triumph lies in its execution. Even if you go in knowing about Alexander Wilson, the narrative keeps us guessing how his story will turn. The narrative simmers with the right dose of mystery without going over the top with its predictably tragic fallout.

In a deeper sense, the show plays out as a public confessional for Ruth, and a stream of consciousness exercise for Alison. “I write about feelings inside me, things I want to express,” says Ruth as Alison’s voiceover at one point. The series would seem like a visual manifestation of the idea. A lot of lines defining self-analyses for the protagonists have been written into the screenplay — Alec, who leads multiple lives, tells Alison shortly before proposing to her: “Do you think there are moments in life when you want to take leave and decide, ‘yeah that’s who I am?’” The chemistry that the early flashback phase builds for Alec and Alison makes room for gentle romance. They cut a picture of contrasts in the scenes that capture them falling in love. He is twice her age, a Catholic [her family follows the Church of England], and shows her his divorce document. “You have your whole life ahead, I have lived too many lives already,” he tells her, in an almost inadvertently candid moment of reckoning. It is almost as Laxton and Symon were out to create a soft mood that would offset the harsh reality that awaits Alison after Alec dies. The show is understated while establishing Alec’s darker side, mostly through effective dialogues as the various characters talk of him after his death. Symon has written an interesting antihero in Alec — at the same time a dashing casanova and a glib liar, and yet a man who seemed to possess effortless allure. If Alec’s character quickly morphs from his apparent “such a nice man” image [as the clearly-smitten neighbourhood housewife describes him] to a man with a secretive side, Alison gets a character graph that traverses from a happy housewife to a shattered widow obsessed with finding the truth about the man she thought she knew, and loved. The impact of their contrary character sketches gets amplified as the script mixes up the narrative timeline, making the storytelling more interesting. It is a one-artiste show for Ruth Wilson, and she towers over all essaying a suitably fictionalised version of her grandmother. She is equally at home portraying Alison as the gullible young lover and the ageing, widowed mother of two. Wilson leads a formidable cast that renders great performances. [caption id=“attachment_10366311” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Ruth Wilson in Mrs. Wilson[/caption] Still, one would love the focus to fall one several others in the storyline — particularly Alec and the other wives. In trying to set up the story solely from Alison’s perspective, the series does injustice to the other people who would have been integral to Alec’s life. In the end, Mrs. Wilson stays a watchable tale of marital deceit in the time of espionage rather than use a fascinating plot to understand the mind of a man whom no one quite knew. Iain Glen as Alec is surely the actor who remains underutilised the most, for that reason. Glen, popular among mainstream buffs as Ser Jorah Mormont in Game Of Thrones and the titular sleuth in Jack Taylor, is essentially cast in a role that sees a character study through the eyes of Alison. Yet the screenplay never does justice to the accomplished actor. Anupam Kher plays a vital prop as Shahbaz Karim, Alec’s handler in India who we first meet at the latter’s funeral in the pilot. Shahbaz has a lot of significant information to share on Alec with Alison that will add fresh angles to the story. Kher plays Shahbaz effectively, although his scope for an outstanding act, like most others in the cast, remains restricted. As the story ends, Alison puts an LP in the record player, and notes of ‘How Do You Do It’ by Gerry And The Pacemakers waft through the air. It is a prophetic shot, almost summing up her final heartbreak in store. Overall, the show is a moody piece that oscillates seamlessly between suspense, drama, melancholy, and shock. A balance is maintained to highlight deception in a dual sense — one that defines Alec’s heady world of espionage and the other that drowns Alison’s personal life. Somewhere between these two worlds lay a clearer picture of Alec that the script never really probes. Mrs. Wilson is streaming on Lionsgate Play. Vinayak Chakravorty is a senior film critic, columnist, and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR. ends