Subtle, psychologically twisty drama: BBC3’s Bad Behaviour reviewed

Bad Behaviour is a decidedly solemn new Australian drama series with plenty to be solemn about. It was billed in Radio Times as ‘slow-burning’ – which feels a little tactless, given that the opening scene featured a girl in a boarding-school dormitory setting herself on fire (and burning quite quickly). We then cut to the same girl, Alice, ten years later looking surprisingly well as she gave a cello performance in a venue where the catering staff included a fellow ex-pupil called Jo, who greeted her warmly. Perhaps understandably, though, Alice was reluctant to reminisce about the old days at Silver Creek.

From there, the programme flashed back to the school on the day in 2012 when both arrived as scholarship girls for what the headmaster ironically assured them would be a year they’d never forget. Set in the remotest of Aussie wildernesses, Silver Creek prided itself on its character-building commitment to outdoor education and pupils’ independence. Unfortunately, what this meant in practice was an endless series of exhausting yomps and complete licence for the bullies to bully.

And bully they certainly did – although not in the traditional on-screen way, where mean girls are played for laughs and their comeuppance is guaranteed. Here, by contrast, the cruelty is unsparingly realistic and entirely unpunished.

Within days, the fearsome (and of course toothsome) Portia was leading her henchwomen in a relentless attack on everything Jo and Alice did: from liking each other to menstruating. For a while, in fact, it looked as if we were in for a straightforward, if undeniably wrenching tale of tormentors and their victims. Gradually, however, it was evident that things were becoming more complicated – and even more disturbing – than that. Jo made her hesitant way over to the dark side, seeking to impress Portia with some bullying of her own and leaving a bewildered Alice to twist in the breeze.