Left to right:Kieran, Gemma and Ray
Kieran and Gemma are a struggling couple who live in London. While they love each other deeply, Kieran has to work nights, which leaves them little time together. Gemma on the other hand is having a very hard time keeping her cafe afloat. As they need more money, they decide to take a lodger.Ray, a former swimmer who has had to give up her career due to a severe injury, becomes their tenant. Before long, the three become close, and friendship turns to something more. While the trio fall for each other, they must face new challenges given their feelings.
Created by and originally broadcast on BBC Two from March 15-April 26 of 2020, it was later made available temporarily on Max in the US.
Tropes:
- Affectionate Nickname:
- Gemma calls Kieran, her partner (who she later marries), Kier sometimes. In turn she's called Gem by him and her friends occasionally.
- Ray calls Moira, her friend, Moi.
- Ray's mom often calls her Mona. Her dad also calls her Momo or fuzzle bum.
- Ambiguously Gay: Moira is left uncertain of her sexuality after her intimate encounter with Ray, and hits on Lois as well (who rebuffs her). The series ends with it not being resolved.
- Babies Ever After: The series ends with Kieran, Gemma and Ray happy together, while Gemma's gotten pregnant with all three watching the ultrasound.
- Bilingual Dialogue: Ray speaks to her mom in a mix of French and English.
- But I Can't Be Pregnant!: Gemma had been told she can't get pregnant due to being injured in a car accident. She had unprotected sex with Kieran throughout their relationship but it never happened, seeming to confirm this. Then she gets pregnant despite what she'd been told, and Gemma can't believe it, but really is.
- Cannot Spit It Out:
- Ray finds it very difficult to tell her mom that she's seeing both Kieran and Gemma, never exactly managing. Her mom realizes it anyway.
- Gemma also never manages to tell her dad. He in turn never manages to tell her that he's dying of cancer.
- Career-Ending Injury: Ray was a synchronized swimmer and Olympian whose career ended due to her being severely injured during a routine. She's left depressed and adrift, unsure what she should do after this as it's been her whole life.
- Coming-Out Story:
- Ray tries to tell her mom that she's seeing both Kieran and Gemma, though she never does quite do it. Her mom realized it anyway however.
- Gemma later tells all her family and friends (except her dad) as well. She previously had come out to them as bisexual too.
- Disappeared Dad: Kieran's sister Dee is a single mother who's raising her son Danny alone, which she finds hard.
- Due to the Dead: Gemma leaves flowers by the site of her mom's death in a car accident.
- Feminine Mother, Tomboyish Daughter: Ray not only goes by this Tomboyish Name, compared to her mother her clothing style is more androgynous or masculine, though she'll wear dresses as well. Her mother though finds her usual outfits ugly, urges that she put on dresses to look beautiful, and dislikes that she also got a tattoo, having a far more feminine style herself. This causes some strain between them.
- Flashback: Gemma, Kieran and Ray have flashbacks of their threesome the episode after it's happened while they grapple with this.
- Florence Nightingale Effect: Gemma first fell in love as a girl with the surgeon who had saved her life after being severely injured from a car accident.
- Foreshadowing:
- Gemma speculates Ray is a lesbian on first meeting her. While she's not, it turns out Ray's attracted to Gemma, with it being mutual, while they both like Kieran as well.
- Some drag queens in the club peg Ray as the "unicorn" of Gemma and Kieran, explaining that this means the third partner within a relationship. While at the time Ray isn't with them, the three do get into a triad like this.
- Has a Type: Gemma is with Kieran, a paramedic, and tells Ray how her First Love was the surgeon who saved her life. Ray jokingly says this means her type is medical staff.
- Helicopter Parents: Ray's mom is a bit overprotective to her, though Ray protests that she's now 31. It's somewhat justified as Ray suffered a serious injury a year earlier, though this doesn't explain all her mom does.
- Last-Name Basis: Moira always calls Ray Wilson, her last name.
- Lost Lenore: Lori tells Moira that her girlfriend died in the previous year and so she's not ready to enter another relationship yet.
- Love Confession: In Episode 3, when drunk, Ray accidentally tells Kieran and Gemma that she's fallen in love with them both. Both are thrown by this, but then admit in the Episode 4 that they love Ray too. They tell her in Episode 5 after having a threesome together.
- Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Gemma masturbates watching porn and starts having phone sex with her boyfriend Kieran, as he's off on his job as a paramedic. They don't have sex much initially as his shifts are at night and he needs to sleep during the day, as she complains of.
- Mermaid Problem: Discussed by Moira as she's getting made up as a mermaid with Lois, saying it makes no sense how mermaids and humans could have sex. Lois replies that she's overanalyzing fantasy.
- Mr. Fanservice: Kieran is a handsome, muscular man who gets seen shirtless pretty often.
- Ms. Fanservice: Gemma is introduced while masturbating. Later she greets Kieran, her boyfriend, as she's gone bottomless, flashing Ray accidentally doing so. She then gets shown topless briefly while she's changing not long after this, then again in sex scenes with Kieran and Ray. Gemma's quite pretty.
- Named After Someone Famous: Kieran and Gemma's cat's name is David Bowie.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Ray's full name is Ramona, but she doesn't use it and only rarely gets called this, being called Ray or other affectionate nicknames usually.
- Parental Abandonment: Gemma's mom was killed in a car accident when she was a child. In the series finale, her dad dies of cancer too.
- Polyamory: Gemma and Kieran start first discussing being in a relationship with Ray after they have a threesome together, since both realize they want to be with her too in Episode 5. Ray agrees by the end of the episode, though saying it's such a bad idea. Afterward they have some friction with being equal partners, and telling their loved ones. Melanie, Kieran's work partner, it turns out once dated a married man in an open marriage and is happy having someone to share experiences with after he tells her this. Despite this, they end up as a happy triad still by the end.
- Queer Establishing Moment:
- Though it was hinted heavily before, Gemma explicitly tells Ray while talking in Episode 2 that she's queer, and knew early on. She had gotten in trouble with her dad for her kissing a girl in her secondary school years.
- In Episode 3 Ray confesses (when drunk) to them that she's fallen in love with both Kieran and Gemma. Both are thrown by the revelation.
- Reality Has No Subtitles: Gemma speaks or sings in untranslated Portuguese multiple times.
- Right Through the Wall: Given she's sharing an apartment with them, Ray can hear when Gemma and Kieran are having sex, which starts to turn her on in Episode 3.
- Scars Are Forever: Gemma still has her long surgery scar which runs down her stomach vertically, a relic from the operation that saved her life after she'd been severely injured as a girl in a car accident (which killed her mom) as she explains when Ray sees her in her underwear when they try on dresses.
- Sexless Marriage:
- Gemma and Kieran are having trouble with their sex life starting out as his job as a paramedic puts him on night shifts, while he has to sleep during the day so they find it hard getting much time together for this. Then after he's injured, their difficulty (while he's at home recuperating) is then finding a position which won't hurt him. Later they manage to have sex in bed though, and it's solved finally after Kieran switches to day shifts.
- It turns out Nick and Carolina have been going through this too, as he helps out so little with household chores she doesn't want to have sex with him.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Ray mostly wears drab and unflattering outfits before Episode 4. When she gets dressed up and does her hair for the wedding, she looks far prettier than usual.
- Threeway Sex: Episode 5 reveals that Gemma, Kieran and Ray had one, as they all wake up naked in bed together. This was spontaneous after a long buildup of desire between them all.
- Title Drop: In the series finale, Danny is playing a triangle for a school play. He tells the audience how triangles have the strongest shape, and especially if all sides are equal, with the study of them being called trigonometry. This is obviously alluding to Kieran, Gemm and Ray's triad.
- Tomboyish Name: Ray's full name is Ramona, but she mostly goes by the former. Ray's mildly butch in her usual clothing style, and an ex professional swimmer, though otherwise she isn't very tomboyish.
- Transparent Closet: Ray's mom realizes she's with Gemma and Kieran after seeing the trio embrace. Gemma's friend Naima also could tell from how they acted before Gemma told everyone.
- Two-Person Pool Party: In Episode 3 Kieran and Gemma taking a bath together turns into them (finally) having awkward sex together. Realistically, in the confined space Gemma gets a leg cramp and so they don't go at it for very long.
- Wedding Episode: Episode 4 focuses on Kieran and Gemma's wedding, which is made complicated as Ray had just confessed that she loved them both right at the end of Episode 3.
- Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: Gemma, Kieran and Ray go to an LGBT+ friendly club in the pilot, with drag acts and many drag queens inside, though it welcomes straight people as well. It's revealed Gemma worked there before and is friends with Jason, a drag queen.
