Do You Like Gaslighting Thrillers?

Few people over the last few months have taken better advantage of their BritBox subscription than I (and Riot Women remains my favorite series of the year), and with the Olympics wiping out much of our regular television output for the next month, there’s probably no better time to give the service a trial run. After burning through Riot Women, Blue Lights, Ludwig, Karen Pirie, and a few seasons of Shetland (in that order), the next logical stop is The Game, a four-episode psychological thriller currently hovering in BritBox’s Top Five.

The Game stars Jason Watkins as Huw Miller, a recently retired detective who should be easing into suburban tranquility. Instead, he becomes consumed by an old unsolved case involving a methodical serial killer who stalked his victims before murdering them. When Patrick Harbottle — played with unsettling geniality by Robson Green — moves in next door, Huw becomes convinced that fate has dropped his white whale directly onto his cul-de-sac. What follows is less a whodunit than a slow descent into obsession.

The “game,” such as it is, revolves around gaslighting at a high-stakes level. Either Patrick really is the killer and is deliberately tormenting Huw — moving garden ornaments, appearing at precisely the wrong moments, casually inserting himself into Huw’s family life — or Huw is unraveling in real time, projecting his unresolved professional failures onto an innocent neighbor. The show refuses to tip its hand early, instead letting both possibilities coexist uncomfortably.

As Huw spirals, so does everything around him. His marriage fractures. His relationship with his daughter deteriorates. His former colleagues begin to see him as a liability. Meanwhile, new murders start cropping up, echoing the old case in just enough detail to keep Huw (and the audience) guessing: Is Patrick escalating? Or is Huw subconsciously recreating the crimes himself? The series toys with both interpretations, even floating the possibility that Huw may be experiencing dissociative episodes tied to unresolved trauma from his policing days.

Watkins carries much of the series, turning Huw into a walking bundle of anxiety and paranoia, while Green plays Patrick as a walking example of plausible deniability — all warm smiles and neighborly concern, with just enough ambiguity to make viewers feel unsure every interaction.

It takes an episode or two for The Game to find its rhythm, but once it does, it becomes a nice little pressure cooker. It’s not reinventing the psychological thriller, and its ultimate destination is fairly predictable, but the journey is absorbing: a modestly compelling exercise in unreliable perception, dread, and the idea that losing your grip on reality can happen one small mistake at a time. Think of it as a four-hour paranoia spiral — less about catching a killer than watching a man slowly come apart while everyone around him wonders whether he’s hunting a monster or becoming one. It’s no Riot Women, but it’s competently made TV.