I Am Victoria
Channel 4

In 2019, the first series of writer/director Dominic Savage’s short dramas I Am put shiningly good actors into tough roles about tough female lives. The second series does the same thing with the accent more specifically on mental health and in episode one, I Am Victoria (5 August), we saw Suranne Jones (inset) give a one-hour acting masterclass as a woman whose response to spontaneity, mess and untidiness of any kind is to neurotically apply and reapply her lipstick.

Victoria lives with her family in a house of unnatural tidiness. She calls it her “ideal home”; it is in fact a show home in which the cushions must all be put on the bed in exactly the right order. She seems to be some kind of property developer and gets up at dawn each day to work out in her home gym before settling down to her emails. Every aspect of family life is micro-managed – beautifully dressed children and immaculately wiped surfaces apparently for Victoria an indication of the perfect life she has won through her own drive and hard work. It’s about “opportunities”, she keeps telling her nice husband Chris – but she doesn’t seem to know what that even means.