To my mind, this was another contemporary TV drama drawing too much on the influence of "Broadchurch", with its central murder, dramatic use of seaside and in particular cliff-top locations and different converging back-stories. However, despite an interesting initial premise, on what constitutes carrying out acceptable force when your house is broken into by intruders, there was just way too much going on here for the story to play out coherently and believably. It also wasn't helped, I felt, by inconsistent acting performances amongst the cast.
The main focus falls on a seemingly happily married couple, Tom Meehan as a successful and confident talk-show radio host and Elaine Cassidy as his mousy, quietly-spoken local-newspaper reporter wife. The action starts with their hosting of a party where equal amounts of cocaine and alcohol are consumed in almost stereotypical modern middle-class style. Outside though, waiting for them all to go home or to bed are a couple of young would-be burglars who rather than go after an empty house (and you figure there must be some unoccupied holiday homes in the neighbourhood), patiently await their chance to break in. Meehan though, through a drug/drink-induced haze catches them in the act and accidentally kills one of the fleeing boys. Distraught at what he's done, he corrals his compliant wife and also his as we later learn mistress, Helen Behan who is conveniently sleeping over with them having got out of her face again, as is her wont. Incredibly, the two women go along with his plan to re-dress the scene to make it look as if the boy supposedly attacked him and his wife justifiably stabbed the youth in his defence.
Amazingly, the police buy this theory but not the dead boy's single-parent dad who it seems can accept that his adored, studious son can be an early-morning housebreaker but incapable of doing so alone or wielding a knife. However, in a twist for the genre, it's not the senior detective or even the forensic examination "silent witness" team who have doubts about what happened on the fateful night, but a low-ranking family liaison officer Sally Lindsay who channels her inner Miss Marple and eventually suspects something more sinister.
Things get much messier from there taking in blackmail and more murders as the husband and wife effectively change positions, his cold, professional demeanour crumbling to incoherent panic as she develops a cold, steely persona to take charge of the mushrooming situation. There's also a subplot involving a grizzled old farmer who deals drugs on the side and whose path inevitably crosses with Cassidy's. Running through the narrative too is a flashback to Cassidy as a young girl getting lost in the super-mysterious caves, which they must be, we get so many atmospheric shots of them, so you know they will have a big bearing on the outcome, and guess what, they do.
Really, it's every bit as clunky as it sounds and like I said isn't helped by improbable plot leaps as well as some weak acting by the principals, especially Meehan, who acts as if he's being permanently stung by a wasp and Lindsay who's clearly watched too many episodes of "Father Brown".
It was all very uneven and left me at the end rather wishing someone had just blocked up all the participants in the caves below and not let them out again.
The main focus falls on a seemingly happily married couple, Tom Meehan as a successful and confident talk-show radio host and Elaine Cassidy as his mousy, quietly-spoken local-newspaper reporter wife. The action starts with their hosting of a party where equal amounts of cocaine and alcohol are consumed in almost stereotypical modern middle-class style. Outside though, waiting for them all to go home or to bed are a couple of young would-be burglars who rather than go after an empty house (and you figure there must be some unoccupied holiday homes in the neighbourhood), patiently await their chance to break in. Meehan though, through a drug/drink-induced haze catches them in the act and accidentally kills one of the fleeing boys. Distraught at what he's done, he corrals his compliant wife and also his as we later learn mistress, Helen Behan who is conveniently sleeping over with them having got out of her face again, as is her wont. Incredibly, the two women go along with his plan to re-dress the scene to make it look as if the boy supposedly attacked him and his wife justifiably stabbed the youth in his defence.
Amazingly, the police buy this theory but not the dead boy's single-parent dad who it seems can accept that his adored, studious son can be an early-morning housebreaker but incapable of doing so alone or wielding a knife. However, in a twist for the genre, it's not the senior detective or even the forensic examination "silent witness" team who have doubts about what happened on the fateful night, but a low-ranking family liaison officer Sally Lindsay who channels her inner Miss Marple and eventually suspects something more sinister.
Things get much messier from there taking in blackmail and more murders as the husband and wife effectively change positions, his cold, professional demeanour crumbling to incoherent panic as she develops a cold, steely persona to take charge of the mushrooming situation. There's also a subplot involving a grizzled old farmer who deals drugs on the side and whose path inevitably crosses with Cassidy's. Running through the narrative too is a flashback to Cassidy as a young girl getting lost in the super-mysterious caves, which they must be, we get so many atmospheric shots of them, so you know they will have a big bearing on the outcome, and guess what, they do.
Really, it's every bit as clunky as it sounds and like I said isn't helped by improbable plot leaps as well as some weak acting by the principals, especially Meehan, who acts as if he's being permanently stung by a wasp and Lindsay who's clearly watched too many episodes of "Father Brown".
It was all very uneven and left me at the end rather wishing someone had just blocked up all the participants in the caves below and not let them out again.