# The Nest (2020)

> A childless affluent couple outside Glasgow hire a young working-class woman as a surrogate, and the convenient meeting begins to look engineered.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/84620

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 5
- Episode runtime: 60 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama, thriller
- Created by: Andy De Emmony, Nicole Taylor
- Network: BBC One
- Cast: Sophie Rundle, Martin Compston, Mirren Mack, James Harkness, Christine Bottomley, Fiona Bell, David Hayman, Katie Leung
- TMDB rating: 7.1/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9059820/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: mild
- Tone: tense, unsettling, intimate, claustrophobic, melancholic

## What critics say

Critics broadly praised the tense, intimate performances and the unsettling class-based premise, while noting that some plot turns lean on contrivance.

## Synopsis

The Nest is a British five-episode limited series created by Andy De Emmony and Nicole Taylor for BBC One. Sophie Rundle plays Emily and Martin Compston plays Dan, a comfortable couple living in a huge house just outside Glasgow who long for a baby of their own. Their chance meeting with Kaya, an eighteen-year-old from the other side of the city played by Mirren Mack, leads to an agreement for her to carry their child. Each episode tightens the bond between the families while peeling back the arrangement's hidden pressures, and a question about whether the encounter was really chance hangs over every scene. The engine of the show is the widening gap between their security and Kaya's fragile circumstances, with money, loyalty and control shifting unpredictably. Its tone is tense, intimate and quietly unsettling, built from domestic spaces and uneasy conversations rather than spectacle. Fans of psychological domestic thrillers will find resonance in its affluent secrets, British class tension and slow-building dread.

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