A Teacher | TV Show Review

 

I never usually review TV shows, but I think this is something I'm going to start doing this year - not only because I'd only get to talk about TV shows in a 'Favourites' post, but also because I never get the chance to talk about shows that weren't favourites.

So I'm starting with 'A Teacher'. If you want to watch this in the UK, all 10 episodes are on BBC iPlayer

Claire Wilson (Kate Mara) is a teacher who has started working at a new school during a time when she is dissatisfied with her marriage. However, everything changes when she meets and bonds with one of her students - 17-year-old Eric (Nick Robinson). But soon, Claire and Eric's relationship changes. And what started as a moment of weakness sets the pair on a path that destroys everything around them. Will either of them ever be able to recover from the pain and damage they've caused?

The reason that I started off with this show was because of the simple fact that, as I was watching, there was so much I wanted to say about it.

For a start, I loved the premise. This isn't exactly a new storyline, but I enjoyed seeing it from this point of view. Not only is it a female teacher and a male student (which doesn't always happen on TV), but this story felt truly rooted in reality. 

I really enjoyed the first 5 episodes of the show. We see how these people meet, we see how their relationship starts and develops, and we see its downfall.

In these 5 episodes, we really get to know and, somewhat, understand these characters. Whether we sympathise with either of the characters, we watch with interest as they dig themselves a deeper and deeper hole, wondering how the last 5 episodes will get them out of the mess they started.

And for the most part, these 5 episodes are the making of a really good show. You don't know where it will go, but you're excited to be along for the journey.

However, the last half of the show lost me.

We see the aftermath of this terrible decision, and we find ourselves joining Claire and Eric separately at different points of their lives, through (too many) time jumps.

For me, this is where the substance of the show was lost. Because while we were excited to see what happened, and the effect on their lives, this was only really shown in episodes 6 and 10. 

For the episodes in between, it felt like we were watching filler. We saw Eric and Claire trying to move on, but we didn't need three episodes to do this. We lost the side-characters that we were used to seeing, and we lost a piece of who Claire and Eric were.

Another reason that the latter part of the show didn't work for me was because of how quickly the first half went. It was not enough to see an entire life-destroying relationship play out in 4 20-minute episodes of TV.

For me, this show could have been really well done if it was a 6-episode show, with each episode being an hour long. The 20 minute run-time of each episode was too short to really learn anything substantial about these characters, and 10 episodes felt like unnecessary things were being dragged out when all we really needed was to see the last episode.

Overall, this is a good show with an interesting premise, but after a while the storyline gets a bit repetitive, and a bit stale. 

2.5/5 stars