The Baby (Sky Atlantic)
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Ghislaine Maxwell: Making a monster (C4)
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We won’t let it change. Yes, we’re having a baby, but why does that mean something else?
As delusions go, this one is as crazy as an invasion of Austria in a bicorne hat, convinced you’re the Emperor Napoleon.
For most first-time parents, it doesn’t take long for reality to set in — usually around the third sleepless night.
Tash Is Convinced The Baby Who Is Ruining Her Life Isn’t Hers
It’s even worse for Tash (played by former model Michelle de Swarte) in The Baby (Sky Atlantic), as she’s convinced the blue-eyed cutie who’s ruining her life isn’t hers. He literally fell from the sky into her arms.
The Baby is a daring mix of horror, dark comedy and psychological thriller. Fans of American crime hairdresser Fargo will recognize its intentions, although there are no serial killers or gang killers here – just a six-month-old with the power of life or death over anyone who crosses his path.
In the debut double bill of half-hour episodes, the death toll included two unwilling mothers, two incompetent cops, a garage clerk and a dog.
It started with a woman running through the forest, fleeing from unseen pursuers. We’ve seen that corny image in countless Scandi thrillers, but this time it got weird.
Isy Suttie plays her best friend Rita, but seems to take it for granted that this kid really belongs to Tash
The woman was carrying a baby in a travel bag and the pursuers were a couple of police officers too incompetent to be Keystone Cops.
Then the woman fell over the edge of a cliff, the baby followed, and that’s where Tash came in – catching the falling child like a flying half grabbing a rugby ball.
This was so surreal (much like the subsequent death of the bobbies, crushed by a falling boulder) that it was hard to know whether to take it literally.
An hour later, that question was still unsolved, but mounting evidence is mounting that the nightmare scenes may be partly Tash’s psychotic delusion, perhaps brought on by postpartum depression — the mental illness all too often dismissed as “baby blues.”
Her best friend Rita (Isy Suttie) seems to take it for granted that this child really belongs to Tash. Most other people never think to question it. † † though one of the show’s running jokes is that once a woman has a baby, the rest of the world treats her with tender compassion, as if her personality ceases to exist.
The baby is ambitious, strange, at times stage-like and occasionally distracted by his own cleverness. But if you’re looking for something different to watch, that’s for sure.
Michelle de Swarte is also a stand-up comedian, and one of her stage routines describes the hair-raising night in New York when, after a fashion show, the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein proposed to her.
That may make her unusual, as Epstein generally used other humans to lure his prey.
Ghislaine Maxwell: The Making Of A Monster describes Jeffrey Epstein’s system as ‘a sexual pyramid scheme’
Ghislaine Maxwell: The Making Of A Monster (C4) described his system as “a sexual pyramid scheme.” His mistress, Robert Maxwell’s scheming daughter, recruited teenagers to give in to Epstein’s perverted lusts, then sent those girls out in search of more victims. This series raked over ground trod by previous documentaries.
Robert Maxwell’s wily daughter recruited teens to give in to Epstein’s perverted lusts
None of the films fully explained why Maxwell allowed Epstein’s pedophilia to take so many years. In part, that’s because evil is inexplicable – and it certainly is evil.
But we’ll never fully understand until the riddle of Epstein and his money is unraveled. And there seem to be many very powerful men who are determined to suppress that story.