TV extra Innocent family torn apart in more than just a crime story

GEORGIA HUMPHREYS

IF you’re looking for a different sort of whodunnit to get hooked on, ITV’s Innocent should do the trick. The four-part drama is centred on David Collins (Lee Ingleby), who has served seven years in prison for murdering his wife Tara but has always insisted he isn’t guilty.

Despised by most of his family and friends – especially his wife’s sister Alice (Hermione Norris) who now looks after his children – his only support comes from his brother Phil (Daniel Ryan), who has been tirelessly campaigning to get him freed.

But when David is suddenly released on a technicality, the question remains: what really happened on the night of Tara’s death?

Here, the cast describe what viewers can expect from the thriller.

Ryan, whose TV credits include Linda Green, Mount Pleasant and Skins, admits that he isn’t “really drawn to whodunits”.

But the 50-year-old explains: “I love things that have got an emotional heart, and that’s why I was drawn to this.”

His character Phil has certainly gone through a lot, having sacrificed his career and livelihood, and even lost a relationship, while campaigning to get the appeal and retrial for his brother.

It’s a prospect that once-childless Alice is utterly devastated by, having now formed a successful family unit with David’s children and her husband Rob.

Manchester-born Ryan says of the programme: “It’s got a side order of crime story for me, this show. I found it very, very moving, the tug of these kids caught in the middle.”

As with many television dramas, Innocent expertly shows the world from

feminisation surgery and explores the issue of gender. It’s an immersive, personal journey that takes Munroe from walking the runway at New York Fashion Week, to having her brain scanned in a cutting-edge gender experiment.

Jon Richardson: Ultimate Worrier (Dave, 10pm) If you’ve seen Jon Richardson’s stand-up act, you will know he is one of life’s worriers – but how rational are his anxieties and which of them should he be most concerned about? Hopefully, his new series will provide some answers as he’s joined by fellow comedians and a few experts to explore how severe each issue is before filing it in his “worry index”. In the opening episode, Josh Widdicombe and Suzi Ruffell discuss problems in the home, Lee Ingleby as convicted wife killer David Collins and Hermione Norris as his sister-in-law Alice in Innocent