Terrible title for this contemporary thriller, but get past that and you'll be rewarded with a gritty, twisty drama, well acted and well shot. It's not perfect, but spread over four nights on UK television, it rarely dragged and always seemed to have a plot development to keep the viewer on a hook.
Dougray Scott is fine as the gaunt, laconic ex-gangster, lured back to Manchester by the wiles of a sleazy Irish lawyer (played deliciously by Stephen Rea) and a means-to-an-end police commander, not above using Scott's own son as the cheese in their trap.
The direction is fluid, the background music accentuating the visuals with the tension kept palpable throughout and even if there were some aspects which I didn't like (the repugnant character of the 16 year old girl who ensnares Scott's son by killing a gang member and then sends lascivious pictures of herself to the dying big-shot prisoner who Scott's trapped into freeing), the whole rings pretty much true throughout, from the kidnapping of Scott's pregnant wife by a couple of bent Irish cops in Rea's pay, to the coercion of the family man prison officer to cooperate with the prison break and the final scenes of Scott revenging himself on Barrington and submitting to the time he must serve, even at the expense of missing his new child's birth and growth.
Okay, so I've no idea where Dougray's accent is meant to hail from and I could also have done without the anguished histrionics of Scott and son as they finally bond, but this was high quality TV and a welcome respite from the World Cup, at least for this viewer.
Dougray Scott is fine as the gaunt, laconic ex-gangster, lured back to Manchester by the wiles of a sleazy Irish lawyer (played deliciously by Stephen Rea) and a means-to-an-end police commander, not above using Scott's own son as the cheese in their trap.
The direction is fluid, the background music accentuating the visuals with the tension kept palpable throughout and even if there were some aspects which I didn't like (the repugnant character of the 16 year old girl who ensnares Scott's son by killing a gang member and then sends lascivious pictures of herself to the dying big-shot prisoner who Scott's trapped into freeing), the whole rings pretty much true throughout, from the kidnapping of Scott's pregnant wife by a couple of bent Irish cops in Rea's pay, to the coercion of the family man prison officer to cooperate with the prison break and the final scenes of Scott revenging himself on Barrington and submitting to the time he must serve, even at the expense of missing his new child's birth and growth.
Okay, so I've no idea where Dougray's accent is meant to hail from and I could also have done without the anguished histrionics of Scott and son as they finally bond, but this was high quality TV and a welcome respite from the World Cup, at least for this viewer.