Cult Corner: Jodie Whittaker Is Excellent As A Lying Doctor In ‘Trust Me’

When we talk about streaming culture, we’re usually enthusing about what’s new, but one of the best things about streaming is how it’s made old and obscure cult hits available to a new generation. Presenting Cult Corner: your weekly look into hidden gems and long-lost curiosities that you can find on streaming.

There are a lot of pop culture questions that haunt me. Why didn’t Jack at least try to scoot onto that door? How do we live in a world where it’s impossible for The Young Pope to EGOT? Why aren’t there more opportunities for me to appreciate the raw and emotional acting force that is Jodie Whittaker? Streaming may not be able to answer all of my questions, but Hulu has helped answer one with the U.S. release of Trust Me.

Written by Dan Sefton, Trust Me is a four-part medical miniseries that follows a nurse who’s discontent with her life. She can be abrasive at times and isn’t particularly adored by her co-workers, but when Cath (Jodie Whittaker) loses her job over whistleblowing, her world is turned upside down. The drama explores the morality of coming clean when someone sees wrongdoing versus the importance of loyalty. Throw in a dash of every one of Cath’s professional friends and colleagues turning against her and the mud-slinging that comes with every whistle-blowing case, and it makes for a wide-eyed take on the stakes and dangers of corporate silence. However, Cath certainly isn’t the hero of this morality tale. After losing her job and tarnishing her reputation, Cath tries to build a new life for herself using her best friend’s identity. There’s just one huge problem. Cath is a nurse and her best friend is a doctor.

The series is a classic stolen identity drama, but because of its limited amount of episodes, it doesn’t drag on like other shows in this wheelhouse. Cath is able to keep up her charade long enough to secure a new job and move her young son to a new home, but, just as it would play out in real life, she can’t escape the consequences of her fake identity for long. Instead of constant near-reveals, Trust Me presents an interesting character study of a woman who is a certifiable anti-hero.

It’s a role that suits Whittaker well. The former Black Mirror actress and our upcoming Doctor has always been able to pull out emotional weight from even the most stereotypical roles. Her role as Broadchurch‘s Beth Latimer threatened to be one-dimensional and hysterical, largely because that’s how grieving mothers of missing children are often portrayed on TV. Instead Beth stood as a complicated woman, someone who wasn’t entirely happy with her old life but willing to accept comfort — two aspects of this character that are pushed to the extreme once her 11-year-old son is murdered. If you can’t wait for Whittaker to make you sob uncontrollably in Doctor Who, check out the twisty medical miniseries Trust Me.

Stream Trust Me on Hulu