Courtney's Secret — Episode 1

What happens in episode 1 of Courtney's Secret

Episode 1 of Courtney's Secret starts on moving day, with the landlord's wife washing a muscle car while a neighbour grins from his porch. It runs 67 seconds.

Episode 1 opens from the back of a moving van, a cardboard box in the foreground and a tidy suburban street across the road. The new renter barely has his boxes down before the landlord's wife is washing a black muscle car in the driveway — platinum hair, freckles, a black bikini and a lot of soap — while a grinning neighbour watches from his porch with a towel over his shoulder.

It looks like a sunny flirtation, and for most of the opener it plays that way. But the neighbour's smile is a little too knowing, and the poster, with its leather harness and steel rings on a basement wall, tells you the street has a secret it shares with every newcomer. Five episodes move from golden-hour teasing to something much more controlled. One for viewers who like their suburbia with a hidden door.