Fake, ITV1

Fake is a drama based on the memoir of journalist Stephanie Wood, who fell for a romance scammer. 

Easily done. Who hasn’t fallen for an airline captain whose ᴀssets have been mistakenly frozen and needs cash now? 

But this, it soon becomes clear, isn’t that. Nowhere near. Instead, it takes a deep, dark, forensic dive into how you, I, or anyone might fall into the grip of a maliciously clever imposter.

It’s slow at first but bear with, bear with, as it does build into a gripping psychological thriller.

This is an Australian production, set in Melbourne, with the main character now called Birdie (played by Asher Keddie, who gives a magnificently nuanced performance).

Birdie is a magazine writer, approaching 50, single, no children. You know what it’s like.

Fake is a drama based on the memoir of journalist Stephanie Wood, who fell for a romance scammer

Easily done. Who hasn’t fallen for an airline captain whose ᴀssets have been mistakenly frozen and needs cash now?

But this, it soon becomes clear, isn’t that. Nowhere near. Instead, it takes a deep, dark, forensic dive into how you, I, or anyone might fall into the grip of a maliciously clever imposter

Go anywhere and you’ll have people ask: ‘Seeing anybody?’ Birdie would, it’s true, love to meet someone. 

She first encounters Joe (David Wenham) via a dating app. (‘Love my kids, love my farm, love my dog’, says his profile). 

The series opens with their first date in a bar. Joe looks slightly like Harrison Ford, but gone off, and there is something off about him from the start. 

She knows it, we know it, but can we put our finger on it? We can’t. Yet.

He is a ‘grazier’, he tells her, which I initially thought must mean someone who eats small amounts of food all day long but is, I now know, an Aussie term for ‘rancher.’

He is also an architect, he continues, but stepped away from that to lead a more simple life in a shack amidst 100 acres. 

He has an ex-wife, whom he paints as crazy, and a couple of kids. He is too pushy, barely asks her a single question, gives her (and us) the creeps. 

She cuts the evening short – run, Birdie, run! – but when she tells her mother she won’t be seeing him again her mother talks her round. 

This is an Australian production, set in Melbourne, with the main character now called Birdie (played by Asher Keddie, who gives a magnificently nuanced performance, pictured right)

She first encounters Joe (David Wenham, pictured) via a dating app. (‘Love my kids, love my farm, love my dog’, says his profile)

You are too fussy, Birdie. No one is perfect, Birdie. Time is slipping by, Birdie. Birdie agrees to a second date (the cinema). And so it begins, my friends, and so it begins.

They become a couple. He is, however, not Mr Reliable. He may ghost her, be late for a date or even be a no-show, but his explanations are always just this side of plausible. 

His son had an accident and cut his head open, he may text, and later she’ll receive a pH๏τo of sтιтched scalp. 

He plays with the doubts he knows she has. For instance, he suggests they book into a luxury H๏τel – ‘but it’s $1,000 a night!’, she protests – and because he doesn’t use a credit card himself, as he objects to the fees, would she put it on hers?

She sees the flag, that is red, but in the lift coming back from dinner in that H๏τel he takes a wad of cash out of his pocket and pays her back. 

‘You thought I wouldn’t,’ he says. Now she feels shame. Now she feels it was wrong to have ever mistrusted him. 

Won’t she end up lonely and bitter if she never trusts anyone? Now she’s on the back foot. So clever.

The narrative drive comes from knowing the lies will have to unspool, and who is Joe, really? 

Who is this person who is so deliberately cruel and capable of such a calculated deception? Will he get his comeuppance? 

We also come to understand Birdie who, deep down, knows that Joe is, well, a dirtbag but pushes all that down further because she wants it so much. (I believe this is called ‘willful blindness’).

They become a couple. He is, however, not Mr Reliable. He may ghost her, be late for a date or even be a no-show, but his explanations are always just this side of plausible

He plays with the doubts he knows she has. For instance, he suggests they book into a luxury H๏τel – ‘but it’s $1,000 a night!’, she protests – and because he doesn’t use a credit card himself, as he objects to the fees, would she put it on hers?

This is artfully constructed and so multi-layered you never think of Birdie as a fool. Except once. 

Early on, when a colleague offers to perform a background check on Joe, she demurs. Why? When most of us won’t even buy a kettle without having put the research in? I didn’t get that at all.

But I was riveted, and while all eight episodes are available on ITVX, it will also be available on normal ITV (is that what it’s now called?) from next Saturday.

I am paid to know about TV but even so I am often as confused as you. (Quick question: what is U&Alibi and do any of us need it?)