Every mother’s nightmare
Nine years after her son died, a grieving parent thinks she sees him alive again in this gripping new thriller
Curl up this week with the televisual equivalent of a good-old pageturner – an engrossing thriller-mystery rolling out over four consecutive nights.
It begins with the tragic death of a child: four-year-old Tom is lost and presumed drowned after disappearing below the surface of a freezing lake when his mother Jodie ( Jill Halfpenny) turned away for barely a moment. Police divers search the deep waters, but the boy cannot be found and Jodie is left with nothing but her all-consuming grief.
That is, until the day nine years later when she is driving and spots a teenage boy at a bus stop who is exactly the same age Tom would now be were he alive – and who bears to her mind an uncanny resemblance, i ncluding a distinctive crescentshaped scar under his left eye.
But whatever she might believe, the boy, Daniel (Cody Molko), has his own family with a strait-laced disciplinarian father, successful architect Mark (Rupert Penry-Jones), guarding him closely. In her desperation to get nearer to the boy, Jodie lands a job as a music teacher at Daniel’s school, using fake qualifications to inveigle herself in.
With the viewer kept in the dark as to the truth, we’re torn between feeling sympathy for a bereaved mother caught up in unimaginable emotional turmoil, and concern that her pain has pushed her to the edge of madness and beyond, taking her to a point where there’s no telling what she might do.
Yet still there is also the incredible possibility that Tom somehow survived that devastating day almost a decade ago – but if so, how? Does Mark know the truth? And could this wealthy and eminently respectable professional even have been involved in Tom’s disappearance?
Halfpenny, a former Strictly champion and one of the few actresses to star in both Coronation Street and EastEnders, provides an emotive performance at the heart of a drama that will keep you guessing until the very end. Meanwhile, Cody Molko – son of Placebo frontman Brian Molko – reveals himself as a rising star with a confident performance.
As for the many fans of Penry-Jones, rest assured: even aged 50, he still retains the striking looks and presence that have captivated audiences from when he starred in Spooks almost 20 years ago.