Straight to the point
TRAUMA ITV, 9pm
WITH harrowing scenes throughout, this gripping psychological thriller will hook you in and leave you wanting more.
Adrian Lester and John Simm give powerful performances as the two leads, fathers whose lives collide after a tragic incident.
Simm is working-class dad Dan Bowker, who gets home late after a bad day at work to discover his 15-year-old son Alex is not there.
We’ve seen some thugs from Alex’s school eyeing him up all day, so it’s clear that for some reason Alex is somebody’s target.
Meanwhile, Jon Allerton (Lester) is a high-achieving medical consultant, living an affluent and harmonious life with his perfect wife and daughter. On his birthday, just after blowing the candles out on his perfect cake in his perfect house, Jon is called in to the hospital for an emergency – despite the fact that he’s off-duty.
Alex has been stabbed, and Jon is his surgeon in the trauma room. Meeting Dan for the first time, Jon assures him: “Alex couldn’t be in a better place. We’ll look after him, trust us.”
Which of course means that something terrible is going to happen – we know an alarm bell when we hear one.
It’s a racy plot, but the main draw is the psychological element which sees the lives of both men begin to unravel quite quickly.
There’s crime and moral responsibility and questions of what makes a man good.
And best of all, this continues tomorrow night, concluding on Wednesday, so we won’t be waiting long for the answers.