Rules of the Game S01 1080p HULU WEB-DL AAC2.0 H.264-T4H

When new HR Director Maya begins her job at Fly, she tries to shake up the old-fashioned lad culture and begins investigating historic cases of misconduct. But Sam bristles at the suggestion of institutional bias against women - that was all in the past, and things are different now that she's in charge.However, when Sam arrives at work one day to find a dead body in the office reception, she is forced to reckon with not only the murky behaviour in the present, but murderous secrets from the past as well.

Genre: Thriller
Stars: Maxine Peake

Rules of the Game review - Maxine Peake is barnstorming in a rich, meaty murder mystery

There's more than workplace sexual politics at stake in this tale of harassment, porn and misogyny: this excellent drama is about the reality of women everywhere

@LucyMangan
Tue 11 Jan 2022 22.00 GMT

Hot on the heels of her harrowing turn as the protagonist of Anne, ITV's drama about the grieving mother of a Hillsborough victim who spearheaded the campaign to uncover the true causes of the catastrophe, Maxine Peake delivers another barnstorming performance in Rules of the Game (BBC One).

This four-parter, by Ruth Fowler, uses the conventions of a murder mystery to examine the evolution (or otherwise) of sexual politics in the workplace. Peake plays Sam, the hardbitten manager of a family-run sportswear business, Fly Dynamics. Friends with the sons of the founder (Owen and Gareth Jenkins, played by Ben Batt and Kieran Bew) all her life, Sam has worked there since she was 16 and is revered and feared. The brothers are on the verge of taking the company public when Sam discovers a body - unidentified for the first episode and beyond - on the foyer floor. It has been propelled there from the second floor balcony.

What emerges, in flashbacks to different points in Sam's career as the police question her, is a portrait of a workplace that is not nearly as cosy as it appears, full of consciously and unconsciously predatory men, veiled and unveiled hostilities, and women variously cowed, enraged, in denial and sometimes all three.

The arrival of the new HR director, Maya (Rakhee Thakrar) - brought in to replace a man called Hugh, who left under a cloud but who, she discovers, is still unaccountably on the payroll - causes the first cracks to appear. "e;There's nothing happy or healthy about this place,"e; one employee, Tess (Callie Cooke, full of flinty despair), tells her.

Via Tess, Maya uncovers the story of a 16-year-old employee, Amy (Amy Leeson), who died after a heavy-drinking, coked-up company night out 10 years ago. She begins to sense the silences around her. Several plot strands start to weave together - along with a lot of dark humour that delivers unexpected belly laughs. They make a rich and heavy tapestry, but a convincing one (at least until very late in the series, when a touch of melodrama creeps in).

But where Rules of the Game excels is in the bits in between - the parts that give us the backdrop and illustrate the wider environment in which workplaces are merely concentrations of ever-present toxins permeating our lives in a million subtle ways.

The precarity of women's positions, domestic and professional, and the vicious unfairness of female youth and beauty being accepted as currency, is everywhere. Owen's vampish, high-maintenance wife, Vanessa (Zoe Tapper) - first seen getting Botox while Gareth's frumpy spouse, Carys (Katherine Pearce), looks on - is deeply discomfited in the second episode by the news that she is perimenopausal. Later, she is put out by Owen's "e;banter"e; about how "e;grown up"e; their babysitter, Sam's teenage daughter Gemma (Megan Parkinson), is looking, while Gemma's unwilling entry into the world of sexual visibility is a catalyst for later events. Carys finds violent pornography on Gareth's computer - should she embrace it, ignore it, get over it, or is she allowed to be repulsed?

Then there is the mystery surrounding Gemma's biological father. Sam has never told her who he is, which seems out of character for such a straight-talker and hints at a dark tale. There is also the shady dismissal of Hugh and the agreed importance of hiring a woman to take his place. Most harrowingly, there is the depiction of a coercive relationship that manages to evoke the specificity of the woman's fear in just a handful of scenes.

If I have made it seem like a paint-by-numbers job - sexual harassment, here! Abused woman, there! Dinosaur attitudes, left! Zeitgeisty porn stuff, right! - I apologise. What Fowler has created is a drama that, yes, takes a large subject as its theme and crams in a lot of interrelated issues. But it is never without purpose and never fails to advance the story or portray the reality for the characters - which is also the reality of women everywhere. Not all women, perhaps, but almost all of them. Alongside a propulsive plot, it asks questions about internalised misogyny, gatekeeping, the gradations between self-preservation and complicity, what the rules of the game were and are - and whether women can ever win.

General
Complete name: Rules.of.the.Game.S01E01.1080p.HULU.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-T4H.mkv
Format : Matroska
Duration : 57 min 32 s

Video
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec: Bit rate : 3 924 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Frame rate : 25.000 FPS

Audio
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec: Bit rate : 64 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Language : English

Subtitles : English

Screens