The Widow

A slow-boil eight-episode thriller. [1 Mar 2019, p.47]

Beckinsale brings a stylish ferocity to the role of Georgia. ... The Widow, skillfully written by Harry and Jack Williams, doles out its clues on a need-to-know basis.

It’s a compelling puzzle, a potato-chip show — as soon as you finish one episode, you reach for another. ... If it is too busy and multifarious to be classed as a “white savior” movie — see the recent controversy over the Oscar-winning “The Green Book” — it certainly has elements of one. You will or will not find it distracting.

Even the most underdeveloped characters fare reasonably well, because the cast is uniformly good, and Beckinsale is the kind of actor who can make listening or standing in silence a vital, compelling act. She’s subtle enough to make the clichés more palatable, dynamic enough to add emotional vitality to even the most flat piece of exposition, and thoughtful enough to bring it all back to this idea of grief—in nearly every scene, she gives the impression of a person who’s long been holding her breath. Whenever she even slightly releases it, this ostensible thriller becomes actually thrilling.

The Widow is a series that requires patience to appreciate. After the first two episodes, there wasn’t much to get excited about. But once the dots started connecting in episode three, I was intrigued.

It had an intriguing, if mad, plot, huge ambitions spanning three countries and complex strands including Congolese child soldiers. Unfortunately, the dialogue hadn't quite got the memo. For such a vaulting project, some of it was comically corny.

Watching The Widow was like wandering around an African street market – far too many distractions and far too many tall tales to take much of the offering at face value. So you don’t end up buying much.

[Georgia's] quest is often compelling, but I found myself much more captivated by the traumatic journey of Adidja, kidnapped from a village and recruited as a child soldier, exposed to violence too early. [4-17 Mar 2019, p.10]