Mesmerising performance and slick drama it’d be a sin to miss
So this week I was finally dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century world of streaming by none other than Vicky McClure.
Having ditched her signature cropped ‘do’ for longer, lanker locks, her wig seems to have made as much impact as the storyline in Without Sin, with critics and viewers alike seemingly obsessed with her new-look barnet.
Currently available to stream on ITVX – a first for me – it’s a four-part nail-biter of a series.
We begin with Stella’s life three years after her 14-year-old daughter’s murder, held hostage by her grief and guilt over an unanswered text message.
Stella (McClure) is working as a taxi driver, floating through life in a beanie hat and dowdy threads, like Comp’s slightly more glamorous niece. (The real reason for the get-up becomes clear when we learn her mum works at a stables – take it from one who knows, pixie crops and killer heels do NOT mix with hay, straw and horse muck.)
She’s very nearly broken but retains just a smidgen of a spark – memorably she ejects a male passenger who had been getting too hands-on with his female companion in the back of Stella’s taxi. “He had **** hair anyway,” she tells the woman with a conspiratorial smile.
The fact that her ex-husband Paul (Perry Fitzpatrick) has got his current squeeze pregnant doesn’t help matters. He’s got one of those faces where it really does bug you, where you know him from – until the penny drops and you remember he was in Line of Duty as well. Small world.
Anyhow, Stella agrees to meet the man convicted of her daughter’s murder as part of a restorative justice scheme – and this is where it all gets very interesting...
Charles Stone (Johnny Harris) claims he’s been framed – but is he just a delusional lag trying to get out of jail early or is he the victim of an elaborate set-up? We are taken on an intriguing and complex journey with all the twists and turns you’d expect from a quality drama as the secrets of Stella’s daughter and those around her are gradually uncovered.
And while there’s no pulling on bulletproof vests and haring off after terror suspects in this show, McClure pulls off a more subtle yet equally mesmerising performance as a mum wracked with grief and desperate for the truth.
Just as you’re absolutely convinced you know who’s behind it all, the ground shifts again and the beam of suspicion falls on someone else.
As characters go, there’s some real standout performances aside from McClure. Con O’Neill makes a convincingly menacing gangland villain while Dorothy
Just as you’re convinced you know who’s behind it all, the ground shifts again
Atkinson, as Stella's mother Jessie Cole, is Stella’s rock and takes zero nonsense from her new boyfriend (that’s horse girls for you).
Don’t take my word for it though – it’s available to stream now on ITVX.
As if staying in on a Saturday night isn’t depressing enough, I decided to shun the vacuous hilarity of BGT for Casualty on BBC1. It’s the reassuringly familiar prescription (‘scuse the pun) of drama befalling the accident prone, dodgy and downright gormless residents of Holby.
I’ve not seen it for a while – where’s Charlie? What happened to the magnificent Jac Naylor and her amazing mare stare or was she on the spin-off show?
Regardless, it was the perfect preamble for the Beeb’s new Saturday night drama Annika, with Nicola Walker in the titular role. Det Insp Annika Strandhed is a Norwegian single mum who works for Glasgow's Marine Homicide Unit, investigating unexplained murders that wash up on the shores of a rather dreary looking town in Scotland.
In the first episode, the cheery sight of a man on the end of a harpoon greets her as she juggles taking over a crime unit with parenting a 15-yearold daughter who it’s fair to say is not relishing life in her new school.
Annika is quirky and she’s droll; she indulges in occasional explanations to camera, at one point putting a hilarious feminist spin on Moby Dick.
There’s some great supporting characters including Blair, who was less than impressed when the barista wrote her name ‘Blah’ on her latte cup; and DS McAndrews, who not only has a chip on his shoulder but an enormous mullet that Bad Boy Chiller Crew themselves would be proud of. Beats Simon Cowell’s poker face (he’s clearly bored out of his mind) and the unnerving glassy stare of Amanda Holden hands down.