The ostensibly calm and courteous Gerald Ballantyne lives in and embodies modern suburbia. But he is haunted by the memory of a recent car crash and hounded by his estranged wife and her demands for divorce. Slowly, a festering insanity takes over and unwilling to face the outside world he embarks on a lunatic experiment. Confining himself to his middle-class home, he eschews contact with others and survives entirely off 'food' which he can find in his house. Based on JG Ballard's The Enormous Space.
Acting
Antony Sher's descent is terrifyingly precise and theatrical.
Direction
Smith makes a suburban home feel like cosmic horror.
Production
The house becomes a character—watch it rot with him.
Director
Richard Curson Smith
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Antony Sher and director Richard Curson Smith had previously collaborated on multiple BBC projects, developing a shorthand for this kind of controlled theatrical madness.
JG Ballard called suburbia 'the true terrain of the 20th century'; this adaptation proves he was right about its capacity for surreal horror.
GB
