The Au Pair gets off to a shocking start as we follow the fortunes of Zoe and Chris, who make the fateful decision to get a nanny to help around the house.
In the opening episode of the four-part Channel 5 thriller, the couple, played by Sally Bretton and Kenny Doughty, need some assistance with their family due to their busy lives, but when they recruit mysterious Sandrine (Ludmilla Makowski), they get a lot more than they bargained for…
Here is everything that happened in The Au Pair episode 1…
As the series opens, a young French girl, Sandrine (Ludmilla Makowski), is in a cafe in Provence, where an older woman gives her some papers but refuses to identify herself. She tells Sandrine that things shouldn’t have happened this way, that Sandrine has a right to know but she must keep things to herself. Everything she needs is in the file…
When Sandrine leaves, she pours a hot drink over a dad who has been shouting at his child and tells the kid that she knows what it’s like when people don’t take care of you… We think she’s going to be trouble!
The action then cuts to the Cotswolds two months later when seamstress Zoe (Sally Bretton) is walking through her home town holding some clothes on hangers and greeting the locals before she arrives at a boutique. The lady in the shop asks Zoe how her search for an au pair is going. Zoe is not sure they even need one, but her husband Chris thinks it’s a good idea. A customer in dark glasses appears to be listening…
Outside the shop, Zoe sees her stepdaughter Amber (Margot Pue), who refuses a lift home, but back at the very grand house where Zoe lives, her stepson Noah (Ripley Barden) greets her more warmly. As Zoe goes into her sewing room, she looks sadly as a baby’s dress she has made. She then heads for the next door annex where her father George (Sir David Suchet), who has diabetes, lives. He comments that she seems on better form now and it emerges that she has recently lost a baby. As she leaves, she is perturbed that a gate on the bike shed is banging in the breeze and is someone watching her?
Back in the house, as she relaxes in the bath, Chris (Kenny Doughty) comes in and, amid some flirtatious banter, Zoe asks if she is a bad stepmother. Chris reassures her that the kids love her and that Amber is just going through a phase. Zoe concedes that they must miss their mum but she feels like an imposter because this was Chris’ first wife’s family home.
The next morning, as everyone is getting ready in the kitchen, Amber is awkward with Zoe, but Zoe manages to help Noah with a stained shirt. As she chats to Chris again, they talk about their heavy workload and the prospect of an au pair. Zoe admits she wants the help but is concerned about having a stranger in the house when she is still trying to bond with the kids.
Noah is cycling to school but something goes wrong with the brakes on the bike and he falls off and hurts himself – did someone tamper with it when the shed was open? Zoe gets a call from a young woman who has found Noah and is helping him – it’s Sandrine! As Zoe comes to pick him up, she thanks Sandrine and is impressed by her care for Noah. But she then gets another alert saying George’s health alarm has been triggered so she rushes back home where she finds him collapsed on the floor. Chris, who is a doctor, is there too and they help him as his blood sugar is dangerously low and Chris questions Zoe’s administration of insulin, but Zoe insists she has given him the normal level.
We cut to a remote house where Sandrine has pictures of Zoe’s family and lots of notes on the wall. What is she up to?
Zoe now gives in and says they should get an au pair but when a girl arrives for an interview Sandrine stops her at the gate and says she looks after the estate and the role has been filled. We then see Sandrine herself going for an interview with Zoe and Chris, and Zoe is delighted to see her again after she helped Noah. Sandrine seems perfect for the role and even has experience of administering insulin. Uh-oh!
Two weeks later, Sandrine has made herself indispensable in the house and, when the family plan a camping trip, she says she will look in on George. As she chats to Zoe, she picks up the baby’s dress and Zoe reveals she was making it for her child who she lost mid-term and she can’t bring herself to part with it or finish it. Sandrine says she can finish it for the next time she gets pregnant, but Zoe says Chris won't let her go through a pregnancy again. But she reveals that she still has embryos at the clinic so Sandrine tells her to go for it and just tell Chris it was a natural miracle.
Outside we see Amber chatting to her friend Raye (Ebimie Anthony), who is secretly pregnant, and Sandrine overhears them.
Zoe talks to Chris about doing another embryo transfer but Chris is reluctant. He says the risks are too great and there might be complications. Zoe wants him to just be her doctor and not her husband. She then talks to George, who was an obstetrician. He says that she lost a lot of blood before, so a pregnancy could be life-threatening to her and a baby, but the risk is not high. He thinks Zoe would be a lovely mum and that Chris just fears losing another wife. But when Zoe says she’s thinking of getting the ball rolling without Chris knowing, George says he wants to stay out of it.
As Sandrine takes Noah to school through the woods, he reveals to her that Amber once deliberately ripped one of Zoe’s dresses. Meanwhile a group of bullies mock Noah for having a babysitter.
Zoe has taken the plunge and gone to the doctor but claims to have forgotten to bring the signed consent form from both her and Chris, but says she will bring it next time. The doctor says she will give her the pre-transfer meds. Later, Zoe tells Chris she wants to talk to him when they go on their camping trip.
Back in the sewing room, Sandrine is ripping a dress that Zoe has been working on and she quickly has to hide when Zoe comes in. When Zoe later goes to show the client the dress, she is devastated to find it ruined. Zoe angrily confronts Amber, who denies all knowledge of sabotaging the outfit, and Sandrine secretly smirks. She then gets Chris alone and says she is worried about Zoe, she thinks she ripped the dress herself without realising and that she shouldn’t keep working on the baby’s dress.
We then see her heading into the woods where she threatens Noah’s bully and warns him not to hurt Noah again. But she doesn’t know that Amber and Raye have seen her…
Sandrine calls Chris again to emphasise how upset Zoe seems and she opens a drawer so that the pre-transfer medication is visible. He comes home and tells Zoe he is worried about her but she reassures him she is OK and just busy but he seems doubtful. But he hasn’t spotted the pills. As Zoe gets ready for the camping trip, she packs the form for Chris to sign.
When Noah arrives home thrilled that his bully apologised to him, Amber says that a psycho is going around beating up kids and Noah asks Sandrine if it was her. She says someone has to look out for him. And she later walks in on Amber and Raye and tells them she knows about Raye’s pregnancy but will keep the secret…
Sandrine now turns her attention to George and gives him soup that she has laced with pills, as she leaves him alone, he becomes groggy and falls to the ground while she watches from the window.
Zoe’s doctor once more asks her for the consent form but she says she has lost it and she will get Chris to sign another one. But while she is at the hospital, Chris, who works there, spots her in a corridor but she doesn’t see him.
Back at the house, Chris tends to a collapsed George as Sandrine has called him for help. As Chris looks for George’s medication, Sandrine says Zoe keeps it in the cupboard and he eventually finds Zoe’s own medication…
George goes off in the ambulance and Chris tells Zoe he saw her at the hospital and she admits she signed up for a treatment cycle without him and she was going to tell him on the trip. She wants to be a mother, and he says she is, to his kids. She says it’s not the same, they are not her kids and a hurt Noah overhears her…
Chris goes off on the trip with just the kids leaving Zoe on her own with Sandrine. As an exhausted Zoe says she is going to have a bath, Sandrine brings her up a glass of wine that she has once more laced with pills. While Zoe becomes increasingly woozy in the bath, Sandrine dances to music and we see there is a bad scar on her shoulder. She then heads into the bathroom where she pushes an unconscious Zoe’s head under the water and says that she has waited for this moment…
All episodes of The Au Pair are on streaming service 5, formerly known as My5.
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