Between Adolescence and Toxic Town alone, award-winning screenwriter Jack Thorne has shown he’s capable of dominating Netflix.
But the latest show of his that’s climbing the streamer’s TV ranking originally aired on the BBC, back in 2023.
Best Interests stars Michael Sheen and Sharon Horgan as ‘loving parents forced to make a harrowing decision about their daughter’s medical care’.
The four-parter revolves around this impossible dilemma, in which Andrew and Nicci fight to stop treatment being withdrawn from their teenage daughter Marnie, played by Niamh Moriarty, in what was her first screen role.
Marnie has been left brain-damaged and comatose due to a rare form of muscular dystrophy she was diagnosed with as a baby.
The family’s world, including that of Marnie’s older sister Katie (Saltburn’s Alison Oliver), revolves around hospital visits, treatments and, eventually, a courtroom.
That final, horrifying battle is triggered by Marnie’s doctor Samantha (Noma Dumezweni), telling her parents: ‘We think it’s time to discuss whether it’s right to keep treating her.’
Andrew and Nicci begin to take splintering approaches to fighting for Marnie, as Sheen’s character grows sceptical of Nicci’s commitment to keeping her on life support.
The show clearly draws from real-life cases such as Charlie Gard and Archie Battersbee, whose parents both lost battles to stop their life support being switched off.
But Thorne has said he didn’t want to come down on one side or the other of parents pitted against the NHS.
‘I was tying myself in knots about how to do Best Interests, and then I realised it could be parents on either side. As soon as it was that, everything unfolded,’ he told Deadline. ‘It was a lightbulb moment.’
Moriarty, who has a form of cerebral palsy in her legs, said she became obsessed with landing the role of Marnie after sending in a self-tape.
‘Everyone involved in Best Interests was so proud of the story that we were telling because most people on that set had a personal connection to the story,’ she said.
When this heart-wrenching story of grief for a dying child was first released, it was met with universal acclaim for the performances and the well-handled subject matter.
Critics praised the emotional ‘but never melodramatic’ approach to the subject matter, with the show scoring a 96 per cent rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
Best Interests was also commended for avoiding the obvious pitfall of demonising the NHS workers, who were also put in an impossible position.
‘We see, inch by inch, exactly what these parents are losing. I defy anyone not to cry,’ The Times wrote.