“Truelove,” available now, on Acorn, is an ensemble drama about assisted suicide, about the bonds of friendship and the well-worn paths of regret. Later in its six-episode season, it is also a murder show, which feels a lot less special. But I guess by the time you’ve got morose British people walking by the seashore, you might as well throw in an investigation.
The show centers on a group of old friends who gather at a funeral. In their grief and inebriation, they make a pact: We won’t let one another suffer. We’ll help one another die with dignity if that day comes. That’s what friends are for, right?
When the first terminal diagnosis lands, the pals initially can’t bring themselves to help their compatriot die. But then he tries to hang himself, which he survives, and from his hospital bed he laments to the group, “I’m on suicide watch and ‘do not resuscitate.’” Maybe they will stick to the plan; maybe friendship means doing things together, the important things, even when they’re hard and sad and terrible.
But if life is messy, death is doubly so, and confronting mortality sure has a way of changing one’s priorities. Phil (Lindsay Duncan, fantastic), still a little adrift after retiring from the police force, is incredibly loyal to her friends — and not only because she treasures them, etc. Her husband (Phil Davis) is not part of their clique. Her long-ago love (Clarke Peters) is. Maybe there’s a silver, silver-haired lining to all this heartache.
Some of the needle drops here are perfect and lovely, while others are so on-the-nose they make your teeth ring. Understated, textured arguments exist alongside flat, dumb ones. The show becomes shallower but more propulsive as it goes, especially after a young police officer (Kiran Sonia Sawar) starts looking into this suspicious death cluster.
At its highs, though, “Truelove” is a superb and knotty domestic drama. “Apart from blasting into space, divorce is the most expensive thing you can do,” Phil scolds her newly separated daughter, but she can’t ride that high horse for long. Where one partner accrues commitment, the other amasses boredom and resentment. It’s so easy to love what you don’t have.
