Love him or hate him, you’ll be mesmerised by desperate Dan

Of ALL the emotions actors can portray, resentment is the least attractive. It’s ugly, petty, vindictive — but very human. John Simm has been proving himself the outstanding actor of his generation for the past 15 years, ever since the superlative political thriller State Of Play in 2003.

This week, he clinches that accolade for good, with a devastating performance in Trauma (ITV) as Dan, a bereaved father whose simmering anger tears two families to pieces.

He’s also doing a fine job as a weak-minded Labour MP in the pretentious Collateral on BBC2. But it’s Trauma that really tests him, because Dan is such a difficult character to like — yet Simm makes him hypnotic.

This bitter, blameful man, impotent in every way, is without dignity or self- control. He lashes out at anyone who tries to get close enough to help him.

If you met such a character in real life, you’d be wary, even afraid. It’s easy to understand why the successful surgeon Jon Allerton (Adrian Lester) who is the target of all Dan’s pent-up rage is so shaken by him.

However unattractive his self-pity and arrogance, he is also a man who has suffered appalling bad luck, and doesn’t know how to cope. That deserves our understanding, even if Dan would loathe us for pitying him.

In the first episode of this threepart drama, which concludes tonight, his eldest child was stabbed to death — Alex, a boy of 15. We barely see the killer: he isn’t relevant.

All Dan’s resentment is focused on Allerton, the doctor who assures the parents that their boy will recover — and minutes later is in surgery, fighting, and failing, to keep the teenager alive.

At moments, the narrative tips over into sensationalism — when Dan bursts into the theatre to discover the surgeon with his bloody hands plunged into Alex’s ribcage, for instance.

And there’s the constant fear that the story will self- combust and run about in all directions with its hair on fire, as ITV’s previous drama Girlfriends did. Dan is stalking Allerton, taking compromising photos of the surgeon to send to his wife. It would be a great shame if Trauma descended into common melodrama.

That won’t happen, as long as Simm commands our sympathy. He despises the world, for not giving him wealth, for cheating him of a good education, for forcing him into a menial job and for saddling him with an unhappy marriage.

But most of all, he despises himself. It’s painful to watch, and it’s truly moving.

Shetland (BBC1) is standard fare, by comparison. There’s a murder, and a second murder, and a sad detective who can solve any mystery except the puzzle of his private life.

It’s the same template as Death In Paradise, except, of course, that there’s less sunshine this close to the Arctic Circle.

But the fact that Shetland follows a well-tested formula is a guarantee of solid storytelling. Led by Douglas Henshall as DI Jimmy Perez, the characters are based on the books by Ann Cleeves, who also created Vera, and there’s a strong similarity between the shows: bleak landscapes and the scent of betrayals hanging in the air.

Like a good detective novel, Shetland is absorbing, even when it isn’t memorable. We care enough about the suspects to want to know which one is the killer.

Two years ago, it won a deserved Scottish Bafta. If there were a prize for solid, low-key entertainment, Shetland would win that, too.