Next of Kin
Written by Indian
Summers creator Paul Rutman and partner Natasha Narayan, this atmospheric six-part thriller has a fine cast. Emmy-winner Archie Panjabi is a smart and sympathetic presence as British-pakistani doctor Mona Harcourt, who, together with her wellconnected political lobbyist husband Guy (Jack Davenport) and wider family, is preparing to celebrate the return from Lahore of her beloved brother Kareem (Navin Chowdhry). His failure to arrive as expected on the day a terrorist incident in London results in four deaths, and brings the city to a standstill. It sets in motion a series of terrifying consequences – the most disturbing of which is the sudden interest in the family of the anti-terrorism unit of the Metropolitan Police.
It is a credible, and in parts distressing, depiction of what it is like to be an ordinary British Muslim in the wake of such an attack, especially when it emerges that the real focus of the police investigation is not Kareem, but his 18-yearold student son Danny (Viveik Kalra) who had been becoming increasingly isolated from the family in the weeks before the attack. Gerard O’donovan