How Come Home asks audiences to understand characters that are difficult to like

It’d be easy, really, to dislike Marie. Certainly, the premise will predispose most of the audience against her; Come Home follows the story of Greg, a single father, and Marie, the wife who walked out on him eleven months prior. Immediately, Come Home subverts typical expectations about mothers and fathers, and poses the audience questions that could prove difficult. Can they understand Marie, despite their assumptions?

The first episode focuses primarily on Greg, establishing the status quo of his and his children’s lives following Marie’s departure; there’s something significant about the fact that audiences are given Greg’s perspective first, immediately inviting them to sympathise with him ahead of Marie. As the question of why she left hangs over the piece, what Come Home presents is a family clearly struggling. Christopher Eccleston gives a quiet, almost defeated performance; it’s dripping with melancholy, wearing his heartbreak on his sleeve. He’s easy to empathise with, a lonely man who seems full of empathy himself, taking in Brenna and her son to protect them from her abusive husband. When he sees Marie, all he wants is to know why – and so do we.

I must admit, I found this show quite frustrating, particularly the third episode. I watched them all in one evening, one after the other; I’d been under the understanding that it was going to be something a little more Rashomon-esque, with each episode retelling the same event from different perspectives. It wasn’t that, in the end – though admittedly I do still wonder if perhaps that would’ve been better.

What we got was, I suspect, almost intentionally frustrating. Certainly, it was thought-provoking, and they managed to avoid making it too black and white in terms of either Greg or Marie being straightforwardly ‘correct’. I do wish, though, a little more time had been dedicated to fleshing out Marie’s motivations in the third episode; without spoiling it particularly, in case anyone does want to seek it out and watch it, certain choices that she makes there feel borne more out of a desire on the part of the screenwriter to prompt conflict rather than anything else. (Especially given the ending.)

Still, though. I really enjoyed Christopher Eccleston in this, even the slightly uncanny valley Irish brogue rather than his usual Northern accent; Come Home, if nothing else, did affirm my belief that I’ll watch Christopher Eccleston in basically anything.

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