Oh, another star-studded crime drama

There’s a nagging sense of deja vu about ITV this week...

Only seven days ago, the broadcaster scheduled new crime drama Paranoid featuring an impressive cast. This week, we’ve got another entry in the genre (The Level, Friday, ITV, 9pm) to get ourteethinto- andguess what? That’s right, it’s full of big name stars.

Among those to look out for are such seasoned performers as Philip Glenister, Robert James-Collier, Lindsay Coulson, Noel Clarke and Amanda Burton. However, it’s a relatively littleknown actress who takes the lead role.

Fans of Misfits, Under the Dome and Prisoners’ Wives may recognise Karla Crome, who plays up-andcoming young DS Nancy Devlin here.

“Nancy is a high-flying, ambitious detective sergeant who works for the National Crime Division, a fictional police unit in London,” says Crome of the role. “She has worked her way up pretty quickly. Then she becomes involved in a case which takes her back to her home town of Brighton and forces her to face some family demons she was dealing with when she was growing up.

“There is this work-life conflict that she has going on which means all areas of her life are colliding in a way she doesn’t want them to.”

While growing up, Nancy, who had a troubled background, was best friends with Hayley, whose dad Frank became a surrogate father to her. When she returns to Brighton, Nancy is able to rekindle her relationships with them both, but as Frank is somewhat dodgy, to say the least, news of their closeness would certainly raise eyebrows if it were to become common knowledge.

However, there’s worse to come when she unwittingly becomes caught up in a murde rlinked to Frank. She’s assigned to the team investigating the case so must cover her tracks while trying to find the killer - lit- tle realising that the villain is closer to home than she thought possible.

It’s a great role for C rome, who admits she’s a fan of the crime genre.

“I thought it was definitely something I would watch ,” she claims before revealing how little she knew about the plot before filming began.

“The director, Andy Goddard, didn’t want any of the cast to know who the killer was. So I didn’t know until half way through filming.

“But I guessed right,” she adds. “I enjoyed being a detective. I suppose I was good at solving this one because I was so closely involved with it and I was asking myself really specific questions. Obviously the member of the cast playing the culprit knew they ’d done it, so I was interviewing people after the camera stopped rolling to try and work it out!”

Fortunately, Crome isn’t going to give away any secrets - the last thing wewant is for her to let the cat out of the bag before the show has even begun.