Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Billie Piper, Leila Farzad, Daniel Ings, Matthew Jordan-Caws, Nathaniel Martello-White, Emma Smithin, Molly Jackson-Shaw, Chelsea Edge, Dexter Fletcher, Amanda Abbington, Ryan Gage, Phil Daniels, Lorraine Ashbourne.

Regardless of whether you are considered a celebrity or someone who just happens to be chosen at random to be humiliated, the sense of power that a malevolent hacker can have over your most intimate moments in life is enough to make you consider removing yourself from the modern day rack which is the internet, completely.

Sex can be used a weapon, perhaps more so than is realised, the power it unleashes can have the equivalent of warfare between two people, each either using it to maintain the upper hand in a relationship by allowing the other to be caught cheating, therefore maintaining a sense of superiority of self, or arguably withholding it, using it a punishment, the proverbial whip in the hand of intimacy anorexia which sees one person dominated by want. Such is the act of sex so prevalent in society that almost any drama on television, film or art made today and in history is almost judged as being prudish, at best straight-laced, at worst, the accusation of puritanical formality is finger-pointed at all involved.

To use sex in art is nothing new, and yet it still come across as shocking, a hangover from the Victorian era that still weaves its way through the psyche of the British people; and yet if properly observed, it can be seen as beautiful; disturbing but elegant. This state of sexual freedom and revolt is certainly true in Lucy Prebble’s curtain back and honest reveal in the eight-part series, I Hate Suzie.

Starring Billie Piper as the eponymously titled Suzie, a slightly better than average actor whose sex life has been revealed to the world in an outrageous hack, I Hate Suzie is an expose of the image we try to maintain when our life has been violated in such a perverted and frightening manner. It is also one that reminds viewers just how versatile and great an actor Billie Piper actually is, one who can turn humour and anger on a dime and who isn’t afraid of what the camera is demanding of her.

The series also gives the viewer the insight of how a family dynamic can soon turn sour, not just because of the infidelity that is shown, but also of how a child can soon become tormented, the small clues to their own psyche and turn of anger is reflected in an almost psychotic manner; this is captured with a disturbing light by the actions of Frank, Suzie’s deaf son, and played with tremendous force by Matthew Jordan-Caws.

I Hate Suzie is seismic, painful, aggressive, sensitive, it is a programme that highlights liberation, but which also reminds that with sexual freedom comes responsibility. Impossible to hate, easy to love, I Hate Suzie has Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper in excellent form.

Ian D. Hall