The Feud is a typical 5 thriller - over the top and silly (2025)

If hell is having to spend longer than necessary in the company of your neighbours, then 5’s new thriller, The Feud, has enough brimstone to power an entire suburban street. A street just like picturesque Shelbury Drive – the outwardly peaceful setting for a silly, if watchable, drama about dark deeds behind closed curtains.

The Feud is upfront from the outset that it is a murder mystery. In the first scene, a would-be homeowner inspects a gorgeous semi-detached. But then comes his big Kirstie Allsopp moment when he poses an awkward question: Isn’t it true the previous owners “were killed?”

The uncomfortable exchange between the potential buyer and the embarrassed estate agent is watched by Emma Barnett (Jill Halfpenny), a prying neighbour from across the road. The action then rewinds a month, as Emma, a criminal solicitor married to wet blanket husband John (Rupert Penry-Jones), joins the other cheery inhabitants of Shelbury Drive for a street party.

Much like The White Lotus, The Feud plays a smart game by keeping the identity of the victim a secret. We know the victim can’t be Emma, as she is still alive in the opening scene. But what about John, busy feeling sorry for himself after an extended stint of unemployment and nervous about his wife’s extensive (and expensive) plans to remodel the kitchen?

Then there are their neighbours, Barbara (Tessa Peake-Jones) and Derek (James Fleet), who have kept a low profile since their son mysteriously vanished several years previously. They come across as hugely suspect, especially after they vow to block Emma’s kitchen dreams. Are they nervous about what all the digging might turn up? Or what about Alan (Ray Fearon) and Sonia (Amy Nuttall) – Emma and John’s smug couple friends from across the street?

The obvious potential villain is neighbour Nick (Alex Macqueen)– a paranoid security guard who lives opposite Emma and has taken it upon himself to monitor the parking situation on Shelbury Drive. With his collection of CCTV cameras, he has eyes everywhere, and his curtain twitching extends to him grousing about Emma’s kitchen handyman parking up for extended periods. But Emma’s home makeover headaches are put into perspective when she becomes the target of a police officer (Derry Girls’ Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) whom Emma accuses of racism while defending a client.

Cosy crime is to 5 what global financial chaos is to Donald Trump, and The Feud is an assured weeknight pot-boiler. Still, in the first episode, at least, it is less than clear what “feud” the title refers to. Several people might potentially have it in for Emma: her kitchen-averse husband, the neighbours who definitely didn’t bump off their son, that resentful copper. But none have yet embarked on a tit-for-tat battle of wills with Emma. Where’s that “feud”, exactly?

Questionable title aside, the script ticks along at a pace. John is fed up with his wife’s obsession with a new kitchen. He, however, has a fixation of his own – neighbour Sonia, with whom he has been cavorting when his wife is out at work. That bombshell is revealed to Emma when nosy Nick posts CCTV footage of iffy parking on the neighbourhood WhatsApp, and she sees John and Sonia giggling from a bedroom window in the background.

The Feud has soap opera levels of dialogue and acting, with everyone from Emma’s overbearing solicitor to paranoid Nick portrayed in the broadest strokes. But it nevertheless paints a fascinating picture of an outwardly blissful middle-class neighbourhood that is, in reality, a hotbed of illicit affairs and passive-aggressive parking.

The murder plot will no doubt prove to be as over the top as anything you’d expect from 5 – but in its depiction of suburbia as gossip-fuelled purgatory, The Feud feels right on the money.

‘The Feud’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on 5