Revd Chris McDermott, Lead Chaplain for the University of Sussex

If you have not already seen the series and are waiting on an opportunity to watch – or even binge - on the recent BBC production, ‘Gold Digger’, I will try to avoid any spoilers here.

The story is about a younger man who dates and then gets engaged to an older woman, recently divorced from her husband. Each episode focuses on a particular key character - the woman, her ex-husband, her son, her daughter, her former best friend (for whom the other ex- in her life left her) and finally the young man.

Through a series of un-concealments, layers of pretence and fronts put on by different individuals are gradually stripped away. Only in the final episode do we find the ‘truth’ about the main protagonist, in the light of which earlier pre-conceptions, suspicions, and doubts all fall away.

But all the characters have been concealing or refusing to talk about and name something: historic violence in the family home, the truth about relationships and infidelities, and, symbolically in one major character, a real name and tragic backstory.

As light is gradually shed on each of several stories that comprise the larger narrative, what has been hidden in shadow gets openly talked about and there is a final liberation and release from the past.

The only failure is the one character that refuses to acknowledge and own the past. We see him, in the end, literally locked out in the cold.

The mood in the final denouement is one that can only be described as a kind of lightness of being for the main characters: insight has dawned, some relationships are restored – or in the process of healing - and scarred lives are renewed and given hope. (The story really is much less Pollyannaish than I may be making it sound.)

The note that I somehow found resonant for health and wellbeing was that of ‘un-concealment’ – the dropping of facades and games. And the power of openness and honesty to liberate – not to mention the fragile ecology of trust this ultimately requires. I am not referring to the crude, public, psychological striptease that is the staple of some daytime telly but rather to the power of responsible openness and honesty.

Nor need one be supressing some melodramatic truth that demands revelation. Rather it is the challenge of living with honesty and integrity in our relationships and wearing, so to speak, our real names.

Too often, our real thoughts and views about something, how we feel about a situation or piece of communication, our actual experience – or our real fears and anxieties and hurts – remain suppressed and in the shadows. Sometimes, wisely, this is how we protect ourselves.

But suppressing our own narratives can become a habit of being for us. And what is constantly suppressed invariably surfaces in ways that are less healthy: anxiety and anger makes us ill; we opt for ‘triangling’ and gossip rather than direct communication because it is just too uncomfortable. We often resort to indirect means, not because we are weak or bad but because trust is missing that might otherwise support such ‘un-concealments’ and honest communication.

It is only when we take the risk of being open – and, in doing so, potentially create trust that enables others to similarly be open – that we can do conflict in a wholesome way, present our ‘truths’ and come to understand (even if you disagree) the other’s ‘truth’.

Coming clean. Dropping facades and masks. Relationships placed on the basis of honesty and integrity.

That’s the real gold in ‘Gold Digger’.