A birthday bash thrown for high-flying Tory politician Ben Fitzmaurice (Tom Cullen) at a grand country pile has ended in violence, with blood arcing across the face and crisp white shirt of his best friend, journalist Martin Gilmour (Luke Evans), who’s under arrest and being grilled by the police.
So begins a seductive five-part ITV adaptation of Elizabeth Day’s 2017 novel of class anxiety which, following this attention-grabbing opening teaser, takes us back to 1997, when scholarship student Martin first meets golden boy Ben at a public school. On the curriculum: unrequited love and suppressed desire. The set texts: Brideshead, Saltburn and Ripley.
From the off, Martin (played in his student years by Jonathan Houlston) is clearly beguiled by the privileged society into which he’s been invited. It’s initially a little tricky for viewers to share his fascination, though, given that the younger incarnations of the main characters all look like the oldest teenagers to have appeared on screen since the T-Birds rocked up at Rydell High in Grease.
But look beyond the five o’clock shadows and there are sinister forces at work. Just how far has outsider Martin gone to secure his place in this rarefied world? And what might he have sacrificed to get there? As it turns out, an awful lot. Once the well-mannered surface is scratched away, it becomes clear that Martin is expected to constantly bend himself to accommodate privileged Ben, even if that means setting himself on a collision course with corruption.
Ben’s nickname for Martin is “LS”, short for “Little Shadow”, inspired by the way he followed him around at school, his desire for closeness a mixture of friendship and infatuation. But given the extent to which Martin ends up compromising himself to sustain their bond, a more suitable soubriquet might surely have been “Flak Jacket”. Spool forward to the present day and we begin to sense just how threadbare that protective shield has become.
At the party that’s destined to culminate in bloodshed rather than the blowing out of candles, Martin is once again asked to risk a great deal to deflect attention from Ben, who fears past sins will return to haunt him after he announces his bid to become leader of the Conservative Party. Such is Martin’s desire to be needed that we initially fear he may convince himself that self-sacrifice is his only option.
But the trajectory he’s on ultimately leads him to realise that losing sight of his moral core will kill him in the end. The turning point comes midway through, when he recognises that his role as a one-man buffer is unsustainable. Naturally, this doesn’t compute for Ben, who assumes that, when it comes to the impending scandal, political reporter Martin will be able to bury it, dismiss it as fake news or brand it misinformation. Easy-peasy. He’s done it before and can do it again. But this time, Martin is not for turning.
By the finale of this series, which was both written by and stars Sarah Solemani (Him & Her), the questions surrounding the victim, the circumstances of the showdown and whether they’ll survive the ordeal are answered. But, if we’re being honest, it’s Martin’s future that we care most about.
Like so many gay men of his generation, he has spent his life conforming to society’s expectations, denying himself happiness in the process. Ben has also been similarly trapped, but he’s enjoyed the luxury of being insulated from risk all his life.
For Martin, the realisation has slowly dawned that he’s been exploited, turning him into the anti-Ripley: a man who no longer desires the gilded lifestyle that once captivated him. But having finally seen the cage for what it was, the tension comes in discovering if he can escape it – or whether he’s already blown his chance at liberation.
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The Party is available to watch on ITVX and continues on ITV1 at 9pm on Monday 12 October.
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