The Driver; Secrets and Lies review – gripping drama that leaves you rigid with unrelieved tension
|
Version 0 of 1. “You scored 14,” Vince’s doctor tells him. “You need to score 15 before I can comfortably prescribe medication.” “So what are you saying?” replies Vince flintily. “I’m one point short of depression?” Last night’s opening episode of BBC1’s The Driver (the first of three) began with a car chase, but the real thrill lay in this compact little exchange, whose succinct evocation of Vince’s mental state, unforgiving intelligence and self-awareness and of a pointlessly bureaucratic, endlessly frustrating world, promised much. The rest of the hour delivered, thanks not only to the lovely, wry, elliptical script from creators Danny Brocklehurst and Jim Poyser but also, of course, to the heavy actorly artillery they wielded. There was David Morrissey as cab driver Vince, whose 18-year marriage to Rosalind (Claudie Blakley) is delicately drawn as neither loveless nor miserable, only stale. He is depressed by his (as yet unexplained) estrangement from his son but perhaps even more profoundly oppressed by the littleness of a life short on cash and largely spent hauling drunks and scrubbing sick and urine out of his taxi every night. And then he returns home to a sulky daughter, her vile boyfriend and the groups of carefully averaged people his market-researching wife brings home to mine for data. “What is it this time?” asks Vince, not sniping, just trying for a joke he knows is doomed. “Spray-on curtains? Self-cleaning bathmats?” There was Ian Hart as Vince’s armed-robbing, recently paroled and defiantly optimistic childhood friend Colin, the two of them playing as beautifully off each other as they did 30-odd years ago in Willy Russell’s One Summer. Colin takes Vince to meet a man called Horse (Colm Meaney) who is looking for a reliable man. “Just for some driving. Except sometimes … you might have to drive a bit faster.” Off they set on the road to hell. His first job for Horse is to drive him and a couple of heavies to discuss terms with a middleman who has become greedy. The next is to ferry a delivery of guns from a supplier to Horse (which, we then realise, is when the opening car chase took place, with Vince eventually throwing the police off his trail). The third – and final, at least for this episode – begins gently but suddenly turns into a shocking, savage coshing and kidnapping as – it seems – a prelude to murder. The Horse’s jaws snap firmly shut around Vince’s life. Tell you what – even if you don’t like bitterly, hilariously realistic, gripping drama that leaves you rigid with unrelieved tension by the end, even if it doesn’t gladden your heart to see Morrissey getting his teeth into something worthwhile after being woefully underused in The Walking Dead, watch it for Vince’s discussion with the heavy in the car about the latter’s girlfriend who has gone off to Hartlepool. Watch it for those laughs alone. You won’t be sorry. And then you’ll rewind and watch the whole thing from scratch. See you next week for episode two. Over on Channel 5, and frankly unexpectedly, was an almost equally good drama – Secrets and Lies, a drama imported from Australia in which a child-murder investigation and its impact on the local community unfolds over six episodes. Yes, we have seen its like before, in Broadchurch, but the opener more than holds its own against ITV’s surprise hit. Painter and decorator Ben Gundelach is out for a night-time run when he discovers four-year-old Tom dead in the nearby woods. The police naturally question him. Before long, the media are putting two and two together and making five, or any other number they fancy, and the neighbours are alternately avoiding the family or barging in to beg for macabre details. Shadows of doubt flicker and dance round the family, darkening when Ben initially refuses a DNA test and can’t quite explain how he saw the tiny body in the dense undergrowth at night. What was he doing running at night anyway? Had a few beers, couldn’t sleep. Are you convinced? You obviously don’t live on his street. In the last seconds, it emerges that only one person is convinced of his innocence (Mrs Gundelach is busy pulling forward the couple’s secret plan to separate after Christmas) and it is Tom’s mother, Jess. “I believe you,” she says. “Why?” asks Ben. “Because I know who did it,” she replies. Dum-dum-DUUUUH! See you back here an’ all next week, I think. |