Summary
Mrs Wilson Episode 2 continues to craft an excellent and compelling real-life story of shenanigans that are too wild to have been made up.
This recap of Mrs Wilson Season 1 Episode 2 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
The BBC’s Mrs Wilson is about a bigamist, but it makes you feel like one too. What I mean by that is I really do find myself quite eager to learn of the wartime escapades of Major Alexander Wilson (Iain Glen), and every time a new one is revealed (by Mrs Wilson Episode 2 we’re on wife number three!) I kind of hope there are more to come. Thankfully there’s only one more episode, which is just as well; I don’t think poor Ruth Wilson, who plays her real-life granny Alison, could take much more.
Keeley Hawes plays the latest spouse, Dorothy, fresh from doing a great job as the horny Home Secretary in Bodyguard. She met Alec while he was on Secret Service business abroad, starting out as his local high-society contact. But Alec quite clearly had a habit of mixing business and pleasure, and of making duplicity part of both his professional and personal lives, which is how we find Dorothy and Alison in a smoky slanging match in the early 60s.
This was glorious, obviously, and both women sold the bejeezus out of it. And it’s to be expected, really. Mrs Wilson Episode 2 did a great job of weaving Alec’s tendrils of deceit across two decades, and by my count, we’re not only on the third wife but the fifth kid. Alec was putting it about worldwide, and you’ve got to respect it, in a sense. Likewise with the show, which continues to prove itself as an excellent, compelling drama, and the BBC seems to be producing one after another of those lately.
The question is just how many more skeletons does Alec have in his closet? More wives? More kids? More properties he apparently owns but really doesn’t? The man’s an enigma. But what’s clear is that his shenanigans are amounting to a great show. Works for me.
