HBO Max’s ‘Landscapers’ makes theatre out of true crime

It’ll take about one minute to figure out whether you’ll be into Landscapers: a director yells “Action, rain!” while the words “This is a true story,” appear onscreen as the fake rain falls over London.

A collaboration between Sky and HBO, the four-part series is inevitably polarising, as an overtly theatrical interpretation of a true-crime police procedural. But if you’re into pulverizing that fourth wall, indulging in a spot of theatre, and the golden acting talents of Olivia Colman and David Thewlis, you’ll be hooked.

Landscapers is inspired by the (actually) true story of Susan and Christopher Edwards (Colman and Thewlis), who were convicted of the murder of Susan’s parents, William and Patricia Wycherley, in 2014 and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison. They maintain their innocence to this day. It’s a notorious case that people in the UK are probably more familiar with than those outside it.

The miniseries was co-written by Colman’s husband, Ed Sinclair, and director Will Sharpe, who worked with Colman on the dark comedy series Flowers for Channel 4. The pair did extensive research into the case, poring over hours of interviews and news reports. But most notably, Sinclair had direct correspondence with Susan and Christopher, who are still serving time in separate prisons. The series shows happenings down to the detail — Christopher’s polite “Surrender” email to the police, the couple’s well-reported fish and chips, the fact that the pair turned themselves in while carrying a suitcase full of movie memorabilia.

It’s this film-lover element of the Edwards case that the director truly runs with. The series spends a lot of time on Christopher and Susan’s romance, specifically the lengths someone would go to for the person they love. This hyper-cinematic representation of the loving pair sees Sharpe and Sinclair trying to figure out how a seemingly ordinary couple could commit murder, then bury the Wycherleys (played by Felicity Montagu and David Hayman) in their own backyard in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. The crime went unknown for 15 years, with the couple spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of Susan’s parents’ money — with a significant amount spent, bizarrely, on signed pictures of movie stars, film posters, and books.

Several scenes really lean into this level of story production, especially those that see characters recollecting memories, embellishing facts, or telling different versions of events. Quite literally setting the scene with heightened lighting and overtly set-like rooms, the pair recount (or construct) the weekend in question to the two lead investigators, DC Emma Lancing and DC Paul Wilkie (Kate O’Flynn and Samuel Anderson), who channel a Coen brothers energy while poking holes in the Edwards’ story. Characters magically appear within these memories, striding in to deconstruct them. The bedroom crime scene becomes a neon-lit nightmare, where the deceased victims sit up and interact with the detectives. DC Lancing literally guides the characters and the audience between sets, looking directly into the camera to usher us on and directing her version of events as the police see it. The “London pub” that features in the pair’s recounting is a David Lynch-like stage set as a generic British watering hole for Christopher’s testimony.

At times this has the effect of Lars von Trier’s Dogville meets “We Both Reached for the Gun” from the Chicago movie. It’s this style that will either compel or repel viewers. Scenes from the pair’s past are filmed in black and white, with the Edwards seeing themselves as main characters in one of the Hollywood films they love so dearly. Several sequences vividly weave this fantasy world they’ve created for themselves. The final episode features a surreal Wild West sequence that plays to Susan’s obsession with Westerns and Gary Cooper, coming dangerously close to glorifying, even possibly excusing, the crime in question. But this style of overtly aware drama to represent a real case is at least something fresh for an extremely well-worn genre, taking it out of the courtroom and into the realm of Susan’s imagination.

As well as painting a picture of the Edwards’ inner world, this overt staging exposes our obsession with true crime, our insatiable need to know every last gory detail of a high-profile murder case. Those who know the case will know the core details. But Landscapers takes these widely reported touchpoints and stretches them out to dramatic lengths.

Though this theatrical style has the effect of making a few of Colman and Thewlis’ lines and delivery feel extremely staged, the two lead actors are nothing short of phenomenal in what could have been two very boring roles. Colman brings her characteristic brilliance to the understated, intense role of Susan. A chilling and revelatory scene opposite Montagu as her mother proves one of the series’ standouts. Thewlis undergoes a subtle transformation as Christopher, wielding polite yet unshakable protectiveness toward his wife. O’Flynn is spectacularly dry as DC Lancing, wiping the floor with her male colleagues while enduring blatant sexism, especially from the odious DCI Geoff Collier (played with uncomfortable hilarity by Daniel Rigby). Meanwhile, Dipo Ola provides light yet heartfelt moments as Susan’s well-meaning junior solicitor Douglas Hylton.

While the theatrical, meta style of Landscapers might put some viewers off, the sheer ambition of the series to shed further light on a relatively well-known British story makes it a fresh take on the true-crime genre. Could a stage version be next? It’d work.

Landscapers is now streaming on NowTV in the UK and HBO Max in the U.S.