Behind Her Eyes is a British Netflix limited series that follows a London secretary as she embarks on an affair with her psychiatrist boss but also develops an unlikely friendship with her boss's mysterious wife Adele. Based on a novel by Sarah Pinborough, the show is primarily a psychological thriller but mixes in other genres later in the piece.
It stars Simona Brown as secretary and single mum Louise, Eve Hewson as restless housewife and mental patient Adele, and Tom Bateman as psychiatrist David.
The show has six episodes and premiered on February 17, 2021. It was met with mixed reviews with critics praising the performances but having varied reactions to the twists and turns in the story.
The show has several notable twists which will be revealed simply by the presence of certain tropes, so beware of SPOILERS.
This show provides examples of:
- Adaptational Attractiveness: In the book, Louise is a pudgy woman with shaggy blond hair in unfitting second hand-clothes. In the series, she is played by Simona Brown.
- Ambiguously Bi:
- Louise's friend says it sounds like she's shagging both David and Adele and though Louise only feels friendship for Adele, Adele's motives are initially left open.
- Rob declares himself gay, but he also develops a strong attachment to Adele that may or may not be romantic. He also shows interest in David.
- David is briefly shown bonding with Rob, and Rob is disappointed to find out that it was just friendliness and David is in love with and very attracted to Adele.
- Astral Projection: Turns out this is how Rob!Adele manages to spy on David, Louise, Marianne, and anyone he/she feels is threatening his/her marriage. Real!Adele taught him how to do this, and for her trouble, he killed her and stole her life.
- The Bad Guy Wins: We don't know until the final episodes who the bad guy is, but Rob is and he wins.
- Batman Gambit: Rob!Adele's plan depends on Louise being a good person and wanting to save Adele despite everything.
- Bed Trick: Rob slept with David several times while possessing the body of Adele and Louise.
- Best Friend: In the present, Adele thinks of Louise as this. In the past, Rob was her best friend.
- Big Bad Friend: Rob is this to Adele; they were best friends in the psychiatric hospital, but he stole her body so he could have David to himself.
- Big Fancy House: Adele grew up on a large estate including paintings of her ancestors.
- Body Snatcher: Rob stole Adele's body and life. Her later does the same thing to Louise.
- Body Surf: Rob figures out how to jump from Adele body to Louise's body.
- Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Moody, tormented David is very attracted to upbeat Louise.
- Control Freak: Louise finds the way David controls Adele to be sinister.
- Conveniently Interrupted Document: Rob's journal has multiple pages torn out at the end.
- The Cutie: Adam is a pretty adorable, normal kid who loves both his parents and wants his mum to be happy.
- Dark Secret: Both David and Adele are keeping dark secrets.
- Dead All Along: Adele in the present isn't Adele. Rob stole her body and killed her.
- Depraved Homosexual: Rob. It's never implied that he's evil because he's a homosexual but he is definitely depraved and evil.
- Downer Ending: Rob wins again, killing Louise and taking over her life just as he did with Adele.
- Downfall by Sex: Louise. If David hadn't been attracted to her, and she hadn't entered a sexual relationship with him, she wouldn't have been essentially killed and replaced by Rob.
- Dream Emergency Exit: Louise begins to train herself to control her dreams using Rob's journal, including methods to exit the dream.
- Dream Sequence: The story features multiple dream sequences. Louise suffers from night terrors, often featuring her son in danger. Later, she begins to have more pleasant dreams, some featuring David. In flashback. Rob is able to control his dreams in the same way.
- Dream Spying: Both Adele and Rob are revealed to be able to astral project themselves to spaces they have visited and spy on people. They appear to be asleep, but their souls are not in their bodies. Louise learns to do this.
- Dream Walker: Adele and Rob are able to enter each other's dreams.
- Dream Weaver: Louise learns to control her dreams with the help of Rob's notebook, and she replaces her nightmares with pleasant dreams.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: In the past, Adele had long, flowing, wavy hair. In the present, she has a straight chin-length bob to reflect her new personality and the fact that she isn't Adele anymore.
- Flashback: There are multiple flashbacks to Adele's life as a teenager when she was dating David and friends with Rob.
- Gay Best Friend: Rob was Adele's when they were in psychiatric care. But he's also a Depraved Homosexual and Big Bad Friend.
- Genre Mashup: It's a psychological thriller, love story, and paranormal story.
- Grand Theft Me: Rob's evil MO. First, he talks a trusting Adele into a body swap. Years later, he tricks Louise into leaving her body so he can occupy it.
- Kill and Replace: Rob uses the body-swapping to do this first to Adele and then Louise.
- Living Emotional Crutch: David has become this to Adele ever since he saved her life, even as it is clear that she wants friends outside their relationship.
- Lousy Lovers Are Losers: David hasn't enjoyed having sex with Adele for a long time, only doing it at her insistence and even then he isn't able to maintain eye contact with her. This is because it's actually Rob who is possessing Adele, with the implication his selfish obsession with having David makes him an unsatisfactory lover, as he doesn't truly care about David wants.
- Love Triangle: The relationship between Louise/David/Adele is at the core of the present-day narrative. In the past, there was a triangle between David/Adele/Rob.
- Madwoman in the Attic: Louise's friend suggests that David's forcing meds on Adele may be a benevolent version of this, with him simply trying to care for his mentally ill wife.
- Meet Cute: David and Louise have one of these in a bar when she spills her drink on him.
- Nice Guy: David insists to Louise he is this, but she begins to suspect otherwise.
- Nightmare Sequence: Louise has several nightmares, usually about her son, before she learns to control her dreams.
- Not Himself: Turns out there was a good reason that teenage Adele was so different from the woman David married. They aren't the same person. The same cycle begins again with Louise, with only Adam noticing something is not right with his mum.
- Plagued by Nightmares: Louise suffers from night terrors, which Adele has also suffered from. In the past, Rob suffers from a similar condition.
- Questionable Consent: Rob!Adele and later Rob!Louise has sex with David multiple times with David thinking he's someone else.
- Race Lift: Louise's race is not specified in the novel, but she's described as blond and readers assumed she was white. In a case of Diversifying a Cast, she's Black in the series, but her race plays little to no part in the story.
- Red Herring: The fire that killed Adele's parents and burned David seems to have been just an accident.
- Sexual Karma: David doesn't seem to enjoy sex with his beautiful wife anymore because she is actually possessed by the Depraved Homosexual Rob, but he absolutely enjoys it with Louise (a genuinely kind, good person).
- Sleeping with the Boss: Both Louise and David know this is a terrible idea, but they can't resist each other.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Marianne's cat wasn't as lucky in the book, getting stomped to death by Adele. The same fate as David's cat, who isn't in the show.
- The Stoner: Rob is an unrepentant junkie who does not want to get clean.
- Talking in Your Dreams: In the past, Rob and Adele learn to enter each other's dreams. Louise and Adele practice this as well.
- Threesome Subtext: A lot between Rob, David, and Adele in the past. Adele points out that if it weren't for the Incompatible Orientation between her and Rob, David should be worried, but even with that, there's a lot of subtext in how intensely Rob says he loves Adele and she's made his life so much better.
