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Fatal Attraction, review: Eighties reboot has nothing new to say – but it sure is steamy

Joshua Jackson and Lizzy Caplan lead Paramount+'s reboot of the 1987 erotic thriller - Monty Brinton/Paramount+
Joshua Jackson and Lizzy Caplan lead Paramount+'s reboot of the 1987 erotic thriller - Monty Brinton/Paramount+

With every second Eighties movie classic up for a remake in the streaming age, there’s a solid case for another look at Fatal Attraction. The original, from the Jurassic era of patriarchal certainty, enabled Michael Douglas’s pillar of the family to walk away from a consensual fling with head held high. It was Glenn Close’s Other Woman, bonkers as bat guano, who suffered. In the wake of #MeToo, that uneven distribution of justice surely can’t hold sway in Paramount+'s TV reboot.

Or can it? We’ve hopped from New York to LA, where district attorney Dan Gallagher (Joshua Jackson) is all set to become a judge before 40 until he’s passed over. Perhaps it’s this emasculating blow in episode one (of eight) that prompts him to make eyes at Alex Forrest (Lizzy Caplan, great), here no longer a publisher but a flirty co-worker in – dramatic irony alert – victim services.

What eyes hers are. No disrespect to Close, nor to tightly curled Eighties power-perms, but Caplan’s winking, wise-cracking dark lady harks back to a sultrier epoch. You half expect her to wear a killer stole and wield a phallic cigarette holder. By episode two the intimacy coordinators are in and the principals are ripping off their smalls (symbolically, hers are black, his white).

Alas, by the third episode this Alex 2.0 is revealed to be, if anything, far more scheming than Close’s ever was. This is disappointing. On the one hand the script grants her greater agency, showing quite how manipulatively she entraps her prey. It also allows her to struggle with mental health issues – though her shrink hangs up on her.

On the other hand, making Alex wildly unhinged gives dumb schmuck Dan a free pass all over again. In the plot’s big attempt at reinvention, flashing forward to his release on parole after murdering Alex, he’s even bent on proving his innocence to his now adult daughter (Alyssa Jirrels). As if Hollywood hadn’t already let him off in 1987.

A word of warning about pets. Nodding to the source material, there's a cameo for a white rabbit, now in the possession of Alex’s neighbour. While Alex is no fan (she calls it a c---), the bunny looks safe from boiling. However, the Gallaghers own a fluffy golden retriever called Quincy, who should probably be on his guard. While this so-so reboot has nothing new to say about sexual politics, it may yet redefine what is meant by barking mad.