Two Weeks in August review – Jessica Raine is extraordinary in this exquisite look at a holiday from hell

Drugs, sex, scorpions, breakdowns … a summer trip in Greece goes diabolically wrong in the BBC’s immaculate new show that will give you a well-earned break from bad TV

Hell is other people. But a fortnight’s summer holiday in a Greek island villa with three pals you have known since university, the young second wife of one of them, your depressive husband and the mulish French nanny the second wife has hired to look after her foul child, is surely the innermost circle of it.

Such is the diabolical situation in which Zoe (Jessica Raine) finds herself in Two Weeks in August, an utterly convincing and wholly compelling – in an “if somebody doesn’t push at least three-quarters of these credibly appalling individuals into the sea soon then I will clamber through the screen and do it myself” kind of way, which is the best kind of way – blackly comic drama exquisitely written by Catherine Shepherd, immaculately directed by Tom George and Matthew Moore and perfectly played by the whole cast.

Zoe is a comprehensive school teacher managing life with more grace under pressure than most of us do. A natural carer and conciliator – other characters call her a people-pleaser, because this is always how the selfish view anyone who doesn’t endlessly put their own needs first – she signed her family up for the trip partly because of, yes, friends’ expectations, but also because a fortnight away in the sun sounded like a pleasure. A temporary escape from her job and her ageing, demanding mother, a change for her two children, and a little relief perhaps after supporting her husband, Dan (Damien Molony) through his recent battles, which are eventually revealed, in a brilliant climactic dinner table scene, to have been longer and harder – on both of them – than any of their friends knew. Of course her mother still calls every day, they can’t afford the trip and Dan approaches it with his now-customary dourness (“Nothing fun ever happens when someone says ‘It’ll be fun!’” He is right, obviously, but he is wrong to say it to his valiant wife.)

Making up the rest of the island gang are glamorous Nat (Leila Farzad) whose nose is put out of joint when the casual boyfriend of her gay best friend, Jacob (Hugh Skinner) turns up at the villa, not-quite-at-the-moment-working actor Solomon (Nicholas Pinnock) and the younger wife, Jess (Antonia Thomas) – she has bagged the best bedroom and avoids as much outlay of money or effort as she can, usually by exploiting Zoe. The mulish nanny is Léa (Florence Banks) and is at least openly lazy and parasitic. The rest insist on talking the talk – for example, about how concerned they are about the refugee crisis – without ever realising how far they are from even contemplating walking the walk. A standout moment comes in the second episode, when Jacob makes sure the owner of the boat they take out knows he works for a charity that “raises awareness of wealth inequality”, which is so perfectly one and a half degrees away from being a charity of any use whatsoever that I will love this line for ever.

Thus the stage is set for – everything. What follows, via such tried and tested dramatic devices (done so well here that they feel fresh) as infidelities, oversharings, ingestion of recreational drugs, tale-telling, boat-related mishaps, teenagers, scorpions, a fancy dress party at the palatial home of dreadful couple Flick and James (“We came here to tap into the creative energy and never left!”) played with glee by Dolly Wells and Tom Goodman-Hill, is the story of … well. Zoe’s unravelling? Zoe’s liberation? Zoe’s breakdown? Zoe’s self-actualisation? Zoe’s long-overdue losing of her shit so her friends and family might think twice before unthinkingly taking whatever they need from her every hour of the day? All of the above, and all delivered to us via an extraordinary performance from Raine, which lets us see and understand every moment of her journey and feel, in the end, that it could have gone no other way.

Along the way, it delivers a touch of wry social commentary (in Jacob and his gen Z boyfriend’s differing reactions to the infidelity, in the HR complaint raised against Nat at work) without breaking the mood. It even manages to fold in a mythological element that does exactly what it should – makes the story feel only more authentic, eternal, universal – instead of seeming like a jarring supernatural bolt-on.

Two Weeks in August is in itself like a holiday – a holiday from dramas made up of meretricious moments and unearned payoffs, or which let the beautiful scenery instead of beautifully written scenes do the work. I feel restored after eight hours basking in its brilliance. In real life, of course, I shall keep my passport firmly unrenewed.

• Two Weeks in August is on iPlayer now.