Coldwater, ITV1 review - horror and black comedy in the Highlands

Scripted by Belfast-born playwright David Ireland, Coldwater is a smart and addictive thriller, which manages to squeeze some fresh twists out of its murderous narrative. It also benefits hugely from an excellent cast firing on all cylinders, while also reaping the benefits of its Scottish rural locations.

But our story begins in London, where the anti-hero, John (Andrew Lincoln), suffers a traumatic event at the local school playground. He watches a woman being violently assaulted by a raging maniac, but can’t bring himself to rush to her rescue. Instead he freezes, panics, and then runs away, almost leaving his own daughter behind. It’s an event that has serious knock-on consequences, leaving him crushed by guilt and self-loathing and suffering intimacy problems with his wife Fiona (Indira Varma).Cut to two months later, and John and Fiona have relocated to the picturesque but remote Highland village of Coldwater. Fiona, formerly a successful chef, is trying to write a “culinary memoir”, while John is playing the stay-at-home dad and trying not to drown in his personal crisis of masculinity. The going gets a little weirder when they’re invited to join their next-door neighbours, Rebecca and Tommy (pictured above), and Tommy invites John to join his Bible group. John is instinctively repelled by the notion, but gradually becomes persuaded that it might offer him the help he needs.

However, the fact that Tommy is played by Ewen Bremner (Trainspotting etc) might have set alarm bells clanging, and it soon transpires that Tommy may not be entirely normal. He is, for instance, obsessed with reading books about serial killers such as Ian Brady, Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. And what is the strange little box of mementoes that he keeps in his garage?

However, he puts John forever in his debt when he “tidies up” in the wake of another violent incident (the mild and passive John somehow seems to attract episodes of mayhem and GBH through no fault of his own). He also introduces John to his local band of brothers (which includes the local police chief), and takes him deer-hunting in the woods. This ends in a cathartic marathon drinking session down the pub, and John has an intimate encounter with Catriona the bar-tender (Lois Chimimba), though he can’t remember the details (as she comments, “you think I want people to know I fucked some floppy old man with grey pubes?”).

The trajectory of the piece tracks the changing relationship between John and Tommy, with Tommy congratulating himself on uncovering John’s previously-hidden “inner man”, but it’s accompanied by the parallel stories of their wives. Varma (pictured right with Lincoln) skilfully evokes the way Fiona’s emotions change from love, sympathy and support to frustration and mounting panic. Eve Myles, recently brilliant in The Guest, excels again here as Tommy’s wife Rebecca. Outwardly, she’s the rather spiritual and spaced-out partner in his Bible-bashing endeavours, but inside she’s fighting a continual battle to maintain the appearance of decorum and stability, holding back a monstrous tidal wave that could destroy everything they’ve built.

Ireland has constructed the piece with fiendish skill, mingling hide-under-the-table climaxes with doses of laugh-out-loud black comedy. And the ending leaves just enough unsaid to suggest that a second helping may be in the pipeline.

• Coldwater continues on ITV1 on September 22, 28 and 29. All episodes available on ITVX
• More TV reviews on theartsdesk