Exhilarating, eccentric and endlessly surprising – Landscapers might have left it late but it’s one of the best dramas of 2021.

The result is rich, thought-provoking art that makes Susan and Christopher strangely sympathetic, as they blend the lines of fantasy in order to keep the truth—whatever it might be—deeply buried.

Mostly it’s a showcase for Colman, for that endlessly expressive face and her perfect line readings, for the humanity she draws on so easily. Watch it and marvel.

The stylized sequences ultimately put a distance between us and them, a couple whose lives are as low key as the experimentation is bold. That makes it all the more notable that Colman and Thewlis register so strongly and memorably. Despite the many interruptions, they deliver.

All of this is more cerebrally interesting than it is moment-to-moment gripping. Colman’s fleeting moments of being able to see herself, and the longer stretches of denial, are wonderful to watch, as is the work being done in counterpoint by Thewlis. But the legal-investigation plotline lags (despite strong work from supporting players including Kate O’Flynn and ​​Dipo Ola). ... “Landscapers” is worth sampling.

Colman’s portrayal of Susan and the woman’s quietly stomach-churning volatility is strongest when we aren’t in the realm of fantasy. Otherwise, the show’s cinematic spectacle has a way of dimming the emotional details of Susan and Christopher’s life leading up to their crime.

Landscapers does well in illustrating the value that even the most despairing of us can find in stories, and in cinema, even if it only sometimes manages to find beauty lurking within this grim little tale.