Quantcast

UPDATE TRIGGER WARNING!!! UK TV: "Gold Digger" New Series from BBC One (also available on ACORN)

O.o

Black Women Disproportionately @ Risk For Homicide
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
Messages
59,470
Reaction score
Reactions
401,375 11,864 9,185
442,629
Alleybux
11,900


Trigger Warning: There is a subplot that deals with trauma and suppressed memories of trauma...

Wealthy 60-year old Julia falls in love with Benjamin, a man 26-years her junior. Julia may have finally found the happiness she's always deserved, but Benjamin, as suspected by her family, might be attracted more to her money than Julia herself. #AcornTV

Acorn TV, Where Julia Ormond Dates A Much-Younger Guy, And Her Kids Don’t Trust Him
By Joel Keller @joelkeller May 5, 2020 at 9:30am




The title of the new Acorn TV series Gold Digger doesn’t leave much to the imagination. Mature woman meets younger man, they fall for each other, and the older woman’s adult kids immediately distrust the man’s motives. Can Julia Ormond and writer Marnie Dickens elevate this genre past what we saw in Dirty John two years ago?

GOLD DIGGER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: We see the cliffs and seashore of Devon, England. A woman’s voice says, “Daughter… Wife… Mother. These are my roles. I chose them. For better, for worse. And then you came along, exploded all of that.” We see a stately house, with a woman in a wedding dress looking out the window. She suddenly zips a bag, tosses off her engagement ring, bolts out and gets in her car, her dress hanging out of the bottom of the door as she shuts it and zooms off.

The Gist: A year earlier, Julia Day (Julia Ormond) wakes up on her 60th birthday feeling about as low as she’s felt in ages. She’s about to get divorced from her husband Ted (Alex Jennings), who cheated on her with her best friend Marsha (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and her 24-year-old son Leo (Archie Renaux) live with her in her sprawling Devon home, trying to “find himself.”

On the train to London, she finds out that her daughter Della (Jemima Rooper) won’t be joining her. We then cut to a man who is entering a sleek office building, calling his father to ask if he knows that it’s his mother’s birthday. “She was my wife before she was your mother,” he says dryly. Patrick (Sebastian Armesto) asks his assistant Emily (Maeve Dermody) to help pick out “special” flowers for Julia, because “she’s on her own now.” But when she gets the flowers and calls Patrick, he tells her that he’s stuck at work and will make it up to her.

Without anything else to do, she goes to the British Museum, where she used to work as a conservation expert. As she’s gazing at a missing object, a younger man strikes up a conversation, and to her shock, asks her out for a drink. At first she just knows him as Benjamin (Ben Barnes), but they hit it off on that first date, telling each other dark secrets as well as having fun together. They sleep together that first night, but Julia is shocked again when Ben wants to stick around.

We see a montage of the fun they have together over the next few days. In one scene, he goes to put back an expensive watch he likes and she offers to pay for it. As much as she’d like to stay, though, she goes back to Devon to have lunch with her mother-in-law Hazel (Julia McKenzie), who seems to be taking her side against her son in the divorce. She also runs into Ted, which annoys her, but she confidently says, “I’ve got someone waiting for me.” She also runs into Marsha, who tries to patch things up, but just leads Julia to speed away in tears.

She returns to London and continues to date and sleep with Benjamin, but wonders why he wants to be with an older woman. She doesn’t even know his last name. He tells her his last name is Greene, and that Julia was the first person to make him forget about a previous serious relationship that ended badly. But, in an effort to get back to “real life,” she tells Benjamin that she wants to introduce him to her kids.

At a belated birthday dinner, on the same day her divorce is finalized, she does just that; Patrick mistakes him for a waiter, that’s how shocked they are to see their mother dating someone over 20 years younger than she is, someone she barely knows. When Julia and Della go to the ladies’ room, Patrick and Leo angrily question just why Benjamin is in their mother’s life. Patrick thinks he’s a con man; when Benjamin says, “I’m not going to hurt her,” Leo says he’ll kill Benjamin if he does.

Julia’s kids hang out in a pub after dinner to commiserate, with Della the only one who thinks that Benjamin is making their mother happy for the first time in years. Leo calls him a gold digger, considering the assets Julia is getting in the divorce. Patrick gets drunk and, knowing that there has been tension and a lack of xes with his wife Elmear (Yasmine Akram), stumbles back to his office and makes a pass at Emily, who definitely doesn’t reject his advances. But he pulls back saying, “I’m a good man. I have to be a good man.”

One year later, we flash to the day before the wedding. It seems that Patrick and Elmear have patched up their differences, but Leo and Patrick are even more distrustful of Benjamin. At the rehearsal dinner, Julia says to Patrick, “I’ll say this one last time: Don’t make me choose.” On the day of the wedding, though, he gets an indication that his efforts to discredit Benjamin might blow up in his face.

Photo: Acorn TV
Our Take: Gold Digger, written by Marnie Dickens (Thirteen), tries to play both sides of a well-worn story, where a man comes into a vulnerable woman’s life, and that woman’s adult kids immediately questions that man’s motives. It’s essentially Dirty John, except for the twist where the man is 20 years younger than the woman. The problem is, that twist doesn’t really sustain a story that feels like we know already.

That could be the reason why the first episode was so sluggish. We get the requisite meet-cute and the montage of the two of them having their whirlwind romance. But when Benjamin stays after Julia, her self-esteem still pretty low, asks him to leave, that’s when it feels like the show takes some less-than-believable reaches in order to get the action rolling.

We can feel that the romance between the two is fueled on Julia’s end by this seemingly worldly young man giving her attention, but we’re still not sure what’s fueling it on Benjamin’s end. Attraction, sure. But considering we know as little about him as Julia does, we raised our eyebrows a bit when she decided to introduce him to her adult children, despite only knowing each other for a few days. Is she just that vulnerable? Patrick describes her as “weak,” but we’re not sure about that. A normal-length romance wouldn’t serve the plot as well, so we get this weird and creepy meeting to just kick off the kids’ mistrust of Benjamin.

Mainly, though, it just feels rote. We know that along the way, Patrick is going to find out more about Benjamin, stuff that’s going to make him warn his mother multiple times. We know Ted and Marsha will be involved, and we’ll get flashbacks to all of their pasts as friends. We see Patrick have flashbacks, too, to a time when they were kids seeing something involving their parents that was traumatic. All of that will make what seems like a pretty well-tread story more interesting. But the cat and mouse between Patrick and Benjamin feels like it’s going to be the least interesting part of this miniseries.

That being said, Ormond puts in a fine performance, showing a woman who is reaching a milestone at the lowest point in her life, and the difference in her before and after meeting Benjamin is stark. Barnes is understatedly weird, not playing an obvious creep but not quite believable as someone who has pure motives, either. And Armesto is especially good at showing the roiling emotions just under Patrick’s stoic surface, emotions that may get the better of him at the end of this series.
 
Last edited:

O.o

Black Women Disproportionately @ Risk For Homicide
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
Messages
59,470
Reaction score
Reactions
401,375 11,864 9,185
442,629
Alleybux
11,900
 
Last edited:

O.o

Black Women Disproportionately @ Risk For Homicide
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
Messages
59,470
Reaction score
Reactions
401,375 11,864 9,185
442,629
Alleybux
11,900



Chile, her Black woman friend stole her damn husband

This shyt fixin to messy AF and I am here for the NONSENSE!!!!!!

giphy.gif
 

baladar

genius lives only one story above madness....
Joined
Feb 21, 2018
Messages
18,379
Reaction score
Reactions
214,464 3,494 976
297,496
Alleybux
50,956,848
I remember seeing something about this and noting I needed to see it because of Julia Ormond.

And also because I thought it would be better than another season of Dirty John. Lemme go look for it right now.
 

O.o

Black Women Disproportionately @ Risk For Homicide
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
Messages
59,470
Reaction score
Reactions
401,375 11,864 9,185
442,629
Alleybux
11,900
If you're in the US and don't have ACORN, you can get it for free -sometimes- through your local library
 

O.o

Black Women Disproportionately @ Risk For Homicide
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
Messages
59,470
Reaction score
Reactions
401,375 11,864 9,185
442,629
Alleybux
11,900
She missing alllll the red flags bruv.... :unsure:
 

O.o

Black Women Disproportionately @ Risk For Homicide
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
Messages
59,470
Reaction score
Reactions
401,375 11,864 9,185
442,629
Alleybux
11,900
Trigger Warning: There is a subplot that deals with trauma and suppressed memories of trauma...
 

baladar

genius lives only one story above madness....
Joined
Feb 21, 2018
Messages
18,379
Reaction score
Reactions
214,464 3,494 976
297,496
Alleybux
50,956,848
She missing alllll the red flags bruv.... :unsure:

ALL! OF! THEM!

Finally binged all of this - I'm glad I skipped all the YT promos because I hate having specific scenes to wait for.

There was mess all up in this!

Not divided by episode for anyone who looks at the spoilers.

I never thought Benjamin was really a gold digger. The show was just too front loaded with the title and all the kids dying to expose him that I just knew he'd be aight.

All the rest of men in this weren't sh!t though.

Ted - no explanation needed - that final scene with him blowing up and having EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE KIDS just dip was well overdue comeuppance. Someone still needed to whup his ass though.

Patrick - I never warmed to him because his facial expression was always like curdled milk! Plus he was messy as hell with his cheating ass.

Kieran - secret brothers who turn up out of nowhere are never good.

Leo - I hated that he was a manchild from the get go - talking about the light bulb in my bathroom is out - GO REPLACE IT MUHFUCKA! Also - I was really happy that Cali was not involved in any of the fuckery until Leo had to go get with her.

Marsha was messy too - but I saw the actress in "David Copperfield" just yesterday and was booing the hell out of her character only for her to turn up today in this as a manteef. I'm glad she instantly peeped Ted attempt at one-upmanship and didn't agree to marry him!

I really feel that the show could have done without Della. She didn't serve much purpose other than for LGBT inclusion and to make her siblings look crazier by comparison.

I was cheering for Julia when she got to the point where she was no longer with the sh!ts and was out of fucks to give.

Also, did they talk about the forged prenup after the beach scene?
 
Last edited:

ugfrogishere

General Manager
Joined
Jun 7, 2016
Messages
3,485
Reaction score
Reactions
17,893 561 162
18,995
Alleybux
1,011,347
Just noticed that's Ben Barnes! Prince Caspian? Blast from the past. I'll try and see if I can stream this.
 

Scandalous123

General Manager
Joined
Mar 26, 2010
Messages
1,322
Reaction score
Reactions
10,170 129 7
10,925
Alleybux
61,113
Well damn this was actually a love story lol

Marsha really took her abusive best friends husband... sis downgraded.

idk I feel like there was meant to be a season 2 for this. Too many things were just left there.

Did they ever talk abt having children of their own?

It was a good show, a lot of twists and turns that l didn’t expect. Didn’t think that was the ending we were going to get but atleast it was unpredictable, it was a good watch.
 

Bebecat

MVP
Joined
Mar 25, 2014
Messages
636
Reaction score
Reactions
146 1 1
151
Alleybux
640
I liked it...her son was awful through most of it...people always worrying about their parents $$ lol.
 

Mimic5

Starter
Joined
Jan 10, 2021
Messages
122
Reaction score
Reactions
225 7 3
235
Alleybux
20,085
After watching the series I was left still thinking he was a gold digger.
 

Similar Threads

News Alley

The Lounge

General Alley

Top Bottom