How do you keep an audience fully engaged and invested in a story that can only ever end one heartbreaking way? The four-part British drama Best Interests, which premiered back in 2023 on BBC One and makes its Stateside debut this month on Acorn TV, attempts to answer that question, telling the tale of a loving, relatable couple, Nicci (Sharon Horgan) and Andrew (Michael Sheen), grappling with—and, in Nicci’s case, understandably denying—the news that their adorable daughter Marnie (Niamh Moriarty), who was born with congenital muscular dystrophy, is not going to make it. “There are many beautiful stories in this life,” a kindly doctor explains to them in the first episode, when their child is just a newborn. “Please don’t assume that Marnie’s story is going to be any less beautiful. It’ll just be different. And you have to adapt to that difference. And you’ll find such joy if you do.”
Part of the trick of the show, which is delicately written and structured by Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials) and smartly directed by Michael Keillor (Roadkill), is finding those instances of joy—say, Marnie’s first date in a movie theater with another ill child, blushing through the makeup her mom reluctantly applied—without ever losing sight of the inexorable tragedy. From the jump, you don’t need to be told that this family, which is rounded out by high-schooler Katie (Conversations With Friends’ Alison Oliver), revolves around Marnie’s condition and has done so for years. When Andrew is in the back garden, smoking a joint while blasting music on his headphones, continuing the buzz from the couple’s short, much-needed, and guilt-inducing getaway, and Nicci’s screams from inside start bleeding through, how he leaps into action tells you as much—as does the cut from frenetic closeups in hospital hallways, as Marnie is rushed on a gurney, to the wide shot of the couple in a quiet, otherwise empty waiting room. You know that this is their routine—their life—and you don’t need a doctor to come in to give some expository dialogue to tell you so, as the tired frustration on Nicci’s face, and Andrew’s futile attempts to make a joke, speak volumes.
In the present, Marnie is 13, and after that aforementioned scare, her doctor for more than half of those years, Samantha (The Undoing’s Noma Dumezweni), tells her parents that things have taken another turn for the worse. Irked, Nikki shoots out, “Why don’t you just say what you want to say, okay? Because this dancing around is not helping anyone.” Andrew tries to temper the mood, asking, “What exactly are you saying?” And, at her wit’s end, Nicci snaps, “She’s saying that she wants her to die.”
And this is really the rub of the series: a mother taking on a system—hospital staff have decided to stop Marnie’s treatment—to save her daughter. But another trick this series pulls off is that it doesn’t really feel like a piece about a regular person standing up to a corrupt industry—or one she needs to believe is corrupt, anyway—or a courtroom drama, although it is very much both of those things. For one, the trial itself doesn’t commence until the final episode, and with the exception of an explanation Nicci makes on the courthouse steps—which is constructed to come off as impromptu and in character, not like an Oscar Winning Moment—the show skips a lot of that genre’s hallmarks. What’s more, for as much as this case has gained national attention—“This is on the front page in nearly every city,” a radio announcer comments—Best Interests always stays very insular when other shows or films would widen the scope, which works as each of the three main characters feel well defined and have their own fascinating, spotlight-worthy arcs.
Those journeys are brought to life beautifully, with Sheen’s voice breaking after singing The Stone Roses’ “Your Star Will Shine,” Horgan letting out an exasperated “Fuck off!” to Nicci’s nosy neighbor during a point-of-no-return public spat, and Oliver goofing around with her character’s sis—in one of the show’s many flashbacks, which are presented in a warm and golden glow and always strategically placed—in a way that makes you smile before it wrecks you, a move Best Interests deploys in each episode. U.S. audiences were treated to turns by Sheen and Horgan on the small screen last year (in A Very Royal Scandaland Bad Sisters, respectively), and the actors are fantastic in decidedly different modes here. And with Oliver holding her own against the pair by hitting some real, finely calibrated emotional beats, it’s hard to not be excited to see where she goes next (on TV, it’s HBO’s very promising-looking Task). But even with all of the high drama and acting flexes, perhaps the show’s biggest trick is that it never loses its clear-eyed empathy for anyone onscreen, even as this weighty story basically demands that you pick a side.
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