TV review: The Town

This three-part series began last night in the primetime 9pm slot going up against another superb BBC show, The Hour, and it didn't disappoint.

Andrew Scott – who won a BAFTA for his role as arch-villian Moriarty in Sherlock – leads the cast in this tense drama based in a claustrophobic small town called Renton where "everyone knows something you don't," as the press release for the show explains. Written by Mike Bartlett, it is the award-winning playwright's first foray into a television drama series.

We are introduced to The Town as a suburban family settles down for the night, a mother saying goodnight to her teenaged daughter before joining her husband in the bedroom. The door shuts and we cut to the morning. It is 8:30am and the daughter is in a rush to get to school on time.

Bursting through her parents bedroom door she finds them lying face up, holding hands and stone cold dead. An empty bottle of whisky and sleeping pills scattered on the bedside table point to an apparent double suicide.

As the drama unfolds at the house the dead couple's 30-year-old son Mark Nicholas, played by Scott, is arriving back in his hometown after a long time away from the family in London where he has been working as an architect. He turns up back at his old house just in time to see his mother being carried out in a body bag. After some searching through his parents belongings Mark finds sheets of paper with the words, "I Know" typed on them. A text message on a phone on the couple's bedside table says the same thing.

Puzzled and obviously not convinced by the suicide Mark begins to question the lacklustre police investigation and the lead detective played by Douglas Hodge – also currently starring in Channel Four's Secret State – who seems strangely uninterested in probing any further.

His old friends too are reluctant to listen to Mark's theorising about his parents deaths, most of his old pals preferring instead to get blind drunk in The Antelope pub where Mark left them years before.

Scott is perfectly cast as the man caught in the middle of a mystery. His awkward style gives off an air of uneasiness that helps create The Town's brooding atmosphere. I was jarred out of that atmosphere with the initial arrival of Martin Clunes on screen.

The Men Behaving Badly star may not seem the obvious choice for a drama trying to conjure up a mood of menace and intrigue. However something about his character as, the mayor-who-likes-a-drink, seems to work here. It is a town that is slightly off-kilter and some of the more unusual cast inclusions back this up including the likes of Julia McKenzie, best known as Miss Marple and Gerard Kearns, who stars in Shameless.

By the end of last night's opening episode the inhabitants of The Town were back boozing in The Antelope for the wake after the funeral of Mark's parents.

As Mark slips outside for some fresh air he is called over by Hodge's police detective character who appears to give him a warning to accept the suicides and move on.

So the mystery grows and I am sure the viewing figures will too.

Ben Lammas