Terror and troubled Waters
BBC1, 9pm
“LET me buy you coffee,” coos Jessica Raine, playing Emily, a woman who has just been given back the phone she left on London’s DLR by a good Samaritan.
Then there are gunshots in the cafe, people are killed, everything spins into chaos.
It’s a gripping start to the BBC’s latest thriller, something to keep viewers sated after the recent success of Bodyguard.
But it’s a complicated plot and you’ll need
to pay attention. Flashback to one year earlier and we follow the life of Raza, played by Nabhaan Rizwan. He’s looking for a flat in Shoreditch, East London, being interviewed by a bunch of creative hipster types.
He’s close to his family, helping out when his little brother gets into trouble for taking a pocket knife to school.
Before a night out, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in Rotterdam, his dad advises him to tell anyone who gives him trouble that he’s a Hindu. “Don’t freak, I’m a Sikh” is their mantra. Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to guess that his night out with his girlfriend is going to veer off course.
Elsewhere, Paddy Considine plays cynical, world-weary cop DS Gabe Waters, who runs a web of informers for a counter-terrorism unit. He’s hoping to trace an Islamist cell with links to the Rotterdam bombing.
But it’s a dangerous business trying to coerce people into giving information without overstepping the line.
Their two lives collide, and this takes us on a thrilling ride through the murky underworld of terrorist informants.