Doctor Foster: what next for Tom in series 3?
And so Doctor Foster exited not with the anticipated melodramatic bang but with the whimper of a mother ripped from her son. After endless helpings of steamy shenanigans and eye-fluttering reversals, writer Mike Bartlett took it down a notch for a final episode which was essentially a three-way stand off between Gemma (Suranne Jones), ex-husband-on-the-brink Simon (Bertie Carvel) and their sullen teenager Tom (Tom Taylor).
But did the bittersweet finale give this topsy turvy drama the ending it deserved? Today, Bartlett revealed that there is indeed a third series in the works, so we'll be seeing our beloved bonkers characters again.
1. Does Doctor Foster need to take a breath and calm down?
Sex, paranoia, houses with no curtains and moody adolescents – all human life has been vacuum packed into Doctor Foster. But in its hurry to create a splash, the series has gone increasingly over the top. This spiral into silliness was checked somewhat in a comparatively downbeat finale – no sex and open plan houses with see through walls for starters.
Nonetheless, with Gemma seemingly determined to reconnect with her son, a third season has further potential for overkill. The hope must be that future episodes err towards cautious understatement rather than chucking in several kitchen sinks worth of high class soap opera. Honestly, we’ve had all the bonkers stuff that we – or the characters – can take.
2. What has happened to Tom? (And do we care?)
When Gemma returned to an empty car after talking Simon out of killing himself at the hotel – he was about to use the complicated medical kit she had very helpfully provided – her first thought, and ours, was that Tom had taken his own life. A dash to that busy roadside, where a police vehicle had pulled up, appeared to confirm the worst.
But this was cheap sleight of hand on the part of Bartlett. The officer was in fact handing out a speeding ticket. So no –Tom has made it out, escaping parents from hell Gemma and Simon (sorry Gemma – we know it was all Simon’s fault for cheating but your behaviour was, at the end, unforgivably unstable). His exact whereabouts, however, are destined to remain a mystery. Unless…
3. Will there be a third series?
With Simon and Gemma achieving an uneasy reconciliation – their hug at the end as they reckoned with their son’s disappearance was genuine – and Tom out there, sulking in the great blue yonder, there’s certainly scope for Further Foster. But after two rides on this loopy rollercoaster can audiences stomach another plunge off the deep end?
Or is it more dramatically satisfying to know that, in trying to save her family, Gemma succeeded only in driving Tom away? Doctor Foster has certainly earned its pitch-black conclusion. On the other hand, Bartlett has stated that he’s under no pressure to write a further season and that he would do so only if a compelling story presented itself. So there may well be another Doctor Foster – but don’t count on it in the foreseeable future. The same 24-month gap that divided years one and two is surely a minimum.
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4. Is Gemma a real person – or just a jumble of weird tics?
To date, we’ve really only known two things about Doctor Foster’s eponymous heroine. She’s a decent GP and loves her son. The final episode added shades of grey. Suffering post-natal depression after the birth of her child she had, we discovered, wished Tom dead. In her darkest hour, Simon had stepped in – sacrificing his career so that he could look after the infant.
Just beneath the chintzy thriller trappings were glimmerings of a more interesting drama – a rumination on family, sacrifice and how short-term compromises can sew the seeds for future conflict (underachieving Simon clearly resented Gemma’s professional success). But Doctor Foster was content to flirt with these deeper themes rather than grapple with them in earnest.
Which was probably for the best. Given all the convolutions, portentous social commentary would have been more than the series could bear. That being said, a third season might give the show the scope to explore these deeper themes, without all the nostril-flaring and suicide threats.
5. Was a second season even justified?
Ratings-wise the returning Doctor Foster has been an unqualified success, with some 5.8 million tuning into last week’s penultimate episode – not at all shabby considering the almighty Bake Off is bringing in six million. Dramatically, though, there is a case that Bartlett and the BBC should have left well enough alone.
Season one may have been moderately over the top. But it was genuinely compelling, too, as Gemma turned the tables on love rat Simon and handed him a well-deserved comeuppance.
In order for a second run to work, we had to believe that, for no logical reason, everyone involved would put themselves through the grinder all over again. Foster fanatics will have adored the results. Others may have concluded that a bonus helping of Gemma v Simon was the very last thing the doctor ordered.
6. Will Simon continue to be a cartoon villain?
He breezed back into Parminster a smug cad, with a new wife and an obsession with destroying Gemma. But by episode five Simon was a snivelling mess – deranged (what was he on about threatening to stab the Gemma in the forehead?), suicidal and more of a whiny teenager than his adolescent son.
Add to that the unlikely chain of events whereby Gemma talked Simon out of throwing himself in front of traffic only to provide him with a ready made medical suicide kit (and to again persuade him not to kill himself) and by the end Simon had been reduced to gibbering annoyance. And because it was hard to invest in his villainy it, in turn, became difficult to care, especially, about Gemma and Tom.
The upshot is obvious – Bartlett has pushed Simon all the way as cartoonish anti-hero. If the character is to return, then Doctor Foster is going to have to work hard at turning this sneery creep into a plausible human being.
7. Could Gemma and Simon actually get back together?
The rosy relationship Gemma and Simon had enjoyed in happier times was the subject of several flashbacks. But their interactions in this supposed golden era of their marriage were stilted and cheesy ("safe and sound, the breadwinner returns!", "You are talking to a GP!").
Champagne on the porch – with Simon insisting Gemma retain the cork as reminder of these halcyon days – and a wooden flirtation over the cooker felt similarly empty and underwritten. Not even the determined Jones and Carvel could sell us on Gemma and Simon as blissfully domesticated.
8. Is Doctor Foster just an elaborate punishment mechanism for Gemma?
With its jackknifing plot and overheated dialogue it’s hard to discern what, if anything, Doctor Foster was trying to say about modern relationships. Clearly, it’s unwise to marry a sleazy businessman who looks like Bertie Carvel.
But it was surely significant that the finale placed great emphasis on Tom’s alienation from his career-minded mother – with the worrying implication she was somehow being punished for seeking to combine a professional life with parenthood (Tom unquestionably felt he came a distinct second to her work as a GP).
Perhaps it is better to simply write the series off as an excitable thriller with a downbeat ending rather than assess it as exploration of family dynamics. The greatest disservice we could do to Doctor Foster is take it seriously.
9. Which fitted kitchen has Gemma settled on?
Whatever about the plot, the decor in Doctor Foster has been reliably exquisite. So it was a pity that audiences were left hanging regarding Gemma’s plans for her big kitchen redesign. Forget about missing teenagers and sundered marriages – what we really want to know is whether she went for that minimalist Scandinavian number she showed Tom in the catalogue.
10. What’s going to happen to the secondary characters?
Weird Siân (Sian Brook) has been sold to us as Gemma’s new best friend. And there’s still hangdog love interest James (Prasanna Puwanarajah), feeling sorry for himself in the background. Meanwhile, stern Anna (Victoria Hamilton) and sleazy Neil (Adam James) have moved out, replaced by a wholesome new family. If you didn’t know better, you might think that Doctor Foster was firming up its cast of secondary characters for a potential third series…
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