'Truelove' Is an Accidentally Timely Story About Compassion vs Care

It is common practice for new British dramas to cast established American actors in a lead role – a surefire way to court audiences and funding that has trickled down from international, prestige, or streaming series like The Diplomat, The Gentlemen, Peaky Blinders, The Outlaws, or Industry to modest, terrestrial dramas like Truelove. Sure, Clarke Peters (The Wire) may not be as buzzy a name as Keri Russell, Giancarlo Esposito, Adrien Brody, or Christopher Walken, but the actor, who stars alongside Lindsey Duncan in this assisted suicide thriller has the advantage of having lived in London for decades (moving there in 1972 and working in British theatre and film for years). 

Because his character Ken, an ex-SAS officer, grew up alongside Phil (Duncan) and a handful of now-elderly South West natives, Peters’ standout American accent is far less of an intrusion than Walken parachuted into Bristol community service. No shame to Walken, whose singular acting style makes him perfectly fish-out-of-water anywhere – but watching Peters in Truelove, you sense a life of self-elected social alienation and subdued regrets typical of a long-term British resident.

Ken’s genial but terse personality is a perfect match for the short-tempered and derisive Phil – once childhood sweethearts, they are now resigned to tipsy flirtations at their friends’ funerals. While mourning their pal Dennis, they make a drunken pact to help each other off themselves should they become impatient to wait for a natural death, which ex-detective Phil and former military man Ken don’t pay serious attention to until their cancer-suffering friend Tom (Karl Johnson) tries to hang himself. Moved by pity, empathy, and some other unknown force, Phil and Ken take Tom out on his boat away from the shore and stage an accidental drowning. 

It’s not long before everyone starts sniffing after their dubious act of compassion, nicknamed “Truelove.” Phil’s husband Nigel (Phil Davis) is suspicious about her time with Ken; married friends Marion (Sue Johnston) and David (Peter Egan) want the same service provided to Tom; the eager, by-the-books junior police constable Ayesha (Kiran Sonia Sawar) zealously pursues inconsistencies in the official version of events regarding Tom’s boating death. If Truelove was constrained to a two-hour film, it could be a punchy, funny drama with plenty of room for melancholic reflections on elderly malaise – and have enough time to pivot to a hard-edged thriller as the series does in the penultimate episode. 

But at six episodes, creators Charlie Covell and Iain Weatherby do themselves no favors with wheel-spinning subplots, extended dips in momentum, and a timid, occasionally misguided approach to its immensely prescient subject matter.

The philosophy behind a human person’s right to die is difficult to disagree with; however, Britain’s relationship towards assisted suicide has been complicated in the past year, with the new Labour government fast-tracking an assisted dying law for terminally-ill adults, which has been interpreted by many as an austeric and amoral attempt to ease pressure on the public health service. (As in, rather than increasing public health funding, the government wants to reduce the amount of people who need it.) 

Truelove aired in the UK in January 2024, before the general election that put Labour in power, and was shot in 2022 and 2023; while the subject matter was being increasingly discussed and debated, the creators couldn’t have predicted it becoming a dominant discourse in the country months after it premiered. Phil and Ken express their reservations about their acts of mercy, but this feels more motivated by the criminal repercussions that could come their way (as Phil notes, she could see 14 years in prison) than a lack of empathy for their friends’ suffering.

There’s a telling moment where Ayesha breaks down her theory to a colleague with a crush on her that the innocuous deaths are actually premeditated killings. When her colleague suggests that assisted dying is not the greatest crime in the world, Ayesha loses her cool, venting in support of disabled and geriatric people whose consent to die may be compromised by outside influences or malicious actors (something that Ken and Phil come across in the show). 

Her refusal to acknowledge the compassionate argument skips over the most urgent critique of assisted dying being enshrined in law: we may trust our friends, partners, and family to understand what’s best for us, but can British people trust the state to use their powers in the best interest of the ill and infirm? 

Right now, the Labour government wants to slash disabled benefits in order to hold onto as much public money as possible. This will cost many lives and universally worsen the financial and medical well-being of millions of disabled Brits. Is this the type of government that should be trusted with fast-tracking assisted suicide? 

Ayesha’s character falls weirdly in step with the young, female, South Asian constable characters that appear in the more comedic Wicked Little Letters and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl: intended to represent a capable, progressive voice of common sense, the writers using racial, gender diversity as a symbol for institutional progress, rather than acknowledging why marginalized people would be wary of upholding the letter of the law in a country that has actively oppressed them and their communities. Too eager to associate itself with provocative ideas, Truelove neglects dramatic rigor and fails to interrogate timely issues.

All six episodes of Truelove are available as a binge starting Monday, March 31, 2025, on Acorn TV.