A Town filled with secrets and suspicion.

Andrew Scott stars in this compelling drama about a man returning to his hometown after the death of his parents and what a fantastic job he makes of his part in the drama. Haunted eyes tell so many stories and his curiosity over the reason for his parent’s death is sure to be the undoing of not only him but perhaps the entire town?

The drama began gently with a family scene, preparing for bed the mother (Siobhan Redmond) told her own mother Betty (Julia McKenzie) to remember to take her pills then told her daughter Jodie to get off the phone and go to bed. She made her way to the bedroom, joining her husband (Phil Davis) in the hall and they both proceeded to go to bed. Therefore it was even more shocking to find that overnight they had apparently committed suicide, found by their daughter in the morning.

Son Mark (Andrew Scott) was called back to the town of Renton and confronted by the sight of the local undertaker dropping the body of his mother, which was a sign of dreadful things to come. Trying to cope with the understandable trauma and keep the remaining family together, Mark was clearly distraught but doing the best he could, but the town as he remembered it was very much of the ‘much has happened, little has changed’ sort of atmosphere that can often exist in these situations. A lot of his friends still remained in the town and while some of them were still playing out the same situation they did as teenagers, Mark’s ex-girlfriend Alice has moved on, having married and had a daughter. Still reeling from the death of his parents, Mark was almost desperate to resume his life in London as if to ignore the terrible devastation in his family and forget about it but also feeling some sort of comfort in familiar surroundings and wanting to talk to the one person who he felt knew more about him than anyone else – Alice – but she believed that she no longer knew him.

After finding a series of letters and text messages in his parent’s room with the words ‘I know’ Mark was keen to find the truth but no one would listen to him and dismissed his fears that his parent’s deaths may not have been a suicide as everyone believed but due to some darker plot. With his sister Jodie only fifteen and his aging gran considered unfit to look after her, what was to be her fate?

The Mayor of the town (Martin Clunes) was having his own difficulties as his fight in the pub had hit the headlines and after attending Mark’s parents funeral and making a beautiful speech (as Mark was too distraught), he had a few of his own decisions to make but does he play a part in the town’s dramas?

A dark and mysterious drama with a great cast and the possibility for some murky secrets to be revealed. Andrew Scott is perfect as the grieving son feeling out of place in the town he used to call home and who knows why he fled the town in the first place. There is very much a tight knit community sense where everyone knows everyone, but in this situation, is that a good thing and what lies beneath the benign facade that the town maintains? An intriguing drama that is well set and I can’t wait to see what further mysteries come to light in the next episodes. Well worth a watch.