There are hordes of romcoms that could feasibly be renamed Cheaters. Despite the spicy frankness of this dramedy’s title, its premise – Cupid strikes while at least one of the pairing is in a relationship – isn’t actually a novel, modern twist on the format; it’s one of the founding principles of the genre. From Brief Encounter to Sleepless in Seattle to Bridget Jones’s Diary, unfaithfulness is the bedrock of many an enthralling love story.
Cheaters is no exception. The first season, released in 2022, was a wildly entertaining romp that hinged on a classic romcom coincidence: having indulged in a passionate one-night stand in Finland, Josh (Joshua McGuire) and Fola (Susan Wokoma) returned to their respective homes and partners – only to find that both of these things were situated directly across the road from one another in south-east London. Nightmarish weeks spent wrestling with guilt and intensifying attraction followed, as their unsuspecting other halves struck up a friendship and the two couples’ lives became increasingly intertwined.
The bones of the story may be old, but there were a few things that made Cheaters feel bang up to date, not least the quantity of banging – plus all the kink exploration, masturbation and graphic sex chat (the last one mainly courtesy of Josh’s guileless girlfriend, Esther, played by Callie Cooke). The show made a distinctly un-British effort to be seriously sexy, with the camera lingering on various trysts (let’s just say the intimacy coordinator won’t have been twiddling their thumbs). Meanwhile, Fola’s husband, Zack (Jack Fox), discovered a cure for his erectile dysfunction: watching other people have sex.
The format – 18 10-minute episodes – was another selling point. Rather than resulting in hurried, superficial storytelling, the short-form structure allowed the show to zoom in on emotional minutiae: the fleeting disappointments, the flashes of desire. These snapshots of Josh and Fola’s tangled love lives were brief, but rewardingly exact. Season one concluded with a moment of superbly engineered farce, as Esther stumbled across Zack masturbating while secretly watching Fola and Josh in bed together.
Having ended on a high (for the audience, I mean – it was definitely a low point for the characters involved), Cheaters is now back for its difficult second season. The engine that once propelled the plot has disappeared. There is no longer any affair – Zack and Fola have split (the former is now lodging with a posh middle-aged couple), as have Josh and Esther – and the reliably gripping comedy of errors that stemmed from it has evaporated, too.
It’s hard to maintain a TV show’s momentum when its initial conceit has run its course, but season two proves there is still plenty of complicated romantic entanglements to keep up with. Although Fola and Josh have decided to make a go of it, their former partners remain in the picture. Meanwhile, Fola is feeling suffocated and Josh is worried their attraction will founder without transgressive thrills.
Keeping its protagonists sympathetic and appealing has been a constant battle for Cheaters. While Josh was usually winningly self-deprecating in season one (“I feel like I’m some absolute piece of shit in some French film – that I haven’t even seen!”), this time he can tend towards irritatingly neurotic (take the manic phone call to his sister seconds after Fola says she may move north of the river), while Fola can be off-puttingly cold. Her backstory rationalises this – she has had intimate images shared online without her consent and has often felt rejected by Zack – and in any case I would take a persistently grumpy female lead over a manic pixie dream girl any day, but her lack of joie de vivre can flatten the vibe.
A couple of stock elements are also introduced, such as Esther’s digital nomad boyfriend, picked up on a journey of self-discovery in Thailand, and my new least favourite romcom cliche – when an acquaintance of Josh’s snatches his phone and takes approximately five seconds to sign him up for a dating app against his wishes.
Yet, despite all this, Cheaters still has a place in my heart. This is mainly because it’s so convincing. Psychologically, the show is extremely well observed. I especially like the portrayal of Esther’s quarter-life crisis and Zack’s reckoning with his voyeurism (that older couple? They like to be watched). It’s also allergic to lovey-dovey wish-fulfilment; any sense of resolution – as in life – is always just out of reach. And, for all their flaws, Josh and Fola’s dynamic is deeply relatable: they are simply two people in love, trying their best to make it work. Cheating may be a generic romcom staple, but Cheaters feels like real life.
• Cheaters is on BBC One and BBC iPlayer now
