WHAT TO WATCH THE DROWNING

Channel 5, 9pm

There’s never been a better time for stripping a grippy contemporary drama across several successive nights. This intense psychological thriller certainly delivers on drama, even if some of the plot twists fall short of being credible. Jill Halfpenny does a great job as Jodie, a mother struggling for closure nine years on since the disappearance – and presumed drowning – of her four-year-old son, Tom, on a family day out. One day, driving past a school, she spots a teenager who bears a striking resemblance to Tom and instantly decides that he’s her son. Dismissed by the police, her musician ex-husband and even her close family members (the general lack of sympathy towards her is one of the drama’s less credible elements), Jodie becomes even more convinced that it all fits.

The boy is the right age and physical fit, and he’s obsessed with music just like her and her ex; and there’s something undeniably shifty about the man who claims to be his father (Rupert Penry-Jones). It’s a shame more effort wasn’t put into the script but Halfpenny’s emotionally committed performance mitigates its flaws, and there’s no resisting the pull of the is-he/isn’t-he storyline. The drama runs until Thursday. Gerard O’Donovan

Most of the local crab catch used to be snapped up by Europe but now, thanks to continental lockdowns and other complications, prices are on the floor.

BRITAIN’S LOST MASTERPIECES BBC Four, 9pm

This BBC Four gem returns as Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri seek out yet more underappreciated treasures in Britain’s private and public art collections. Could two splendid old masters be languishing unknown in the bowels of the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery?

Jill Halfpenny plays a mother searching for her missing son