Dive, BBC Two

Dominic Savage’s new two-part film, part of BBC Two’s renewed commitment to intelligent and challenging drama (we shall see; fewer biopics please), comes billed as a look at modern teenage life, although it seemed more drawn to long silences - or the sound of the wind in the trees - and the seemingly desolate land and seascapes of the Lincolnshire coast. Your eyes kept being drawn to the edge of the screen, away from the young protagonists, Lindsey and Robert, which I suppose was meant to lend Dive a fatalistic edge, or a sense of universality.

But what was more surprising, given that this was a collaboration between Savage, Mike Leigh’s heir apparent as the king of improv, and playwright Simon Stephens of Pornography acclaim, was the minimal dialogue.

Not that I mind too much, having spent my formative years hunkered down in the dark with Tarkovsky, Antonioni and the like (the wind in the trees bits reminded me of the park scenes in Blow Up; the monumental interiors of a municipal swimming pool here were altogether more original), while what is left unsaid is one of the many joys of Mad Men. And, anyway, when the dialogue did come it was worth the wait. Less welcome was an annoyingly insistent piano and violin score, adding a slightly bullying grandiosity to what was, in essence, a small-scale of story of teenage pregnancy. Savage, seemingly liberated by collaboration from the writing side of things, suddenly got in touch with his inner David Lean. Or, given the milieu, his inner Ken Loach.

I just hope that he hasn’t made contact with his inner Stephen Poliakoff, because the BBC has shown in the recent past how it can confuse beautiful composition, violin music and pregnant silences with significance. But I mustn’t carp too much, because his somewhat self-conscious direction framed two excellent central performances (or rather non-performances) by Aisling Loftus and Jack O’Connell – both as it happens, alumni of the Nottingham Television Workshop, the drama school that gave Samantha Morton her start in life (O’Connell is known for his work in that far less subtle depiction of teenage life, Skins). They both captured the gawky adolescent mix of bravado and awkwardness, while Loftus had a stillness that seems to transfix the camera.

And the focus in last night’s film was Loftus, as we were told Lindsey’s Story – a not unfamiliar tale of kids going off the rails because of a broken marriage. Lindsey was introduced as a teenager dedicated to high-diving, her father waking her at 6.30am with an energy drink and a muscle rub as she dutifully prepared to fling herself off the top board and follow her dream of representing Great Britain in the 2012 Olympics. And then her father picked her up from training with a car full of suitcases, and a £100 farewell gift (“that’s two thirds of an iPod Nano”, she said bitterly), Lindsey going home to find her mother Jacqueline’s new boyfriend, Gary, already insensitively in situ. You could see already that the training was going to suffer.

Jacqueline was played by Gina McKee, who seems to have cornered the market in long-suffering saintliness, while Gary was played by Joseph Mawle, the actor with the most soulful eyes in television (you can see why he was cast as Jesus) – no wonder Lindsey decided to start hanging about in the local recreation ground with her best friend’s crew of drinking and toking no-hopers, and finally shagging wide boy Robert up against a tree. The excruciating school sex education class we’d witnessed earlier (one of the best sequences in the film, and Savage at his most Ken Loach), with pupils rolling condoms over plastic penises, didn’t seem to have done its job, because on a visit to hospital to attend a knife wound inflicted from one of Robert’s jealous girlfriends, Lindsey discovered she was pregnant.

In tonight’s second half, the focus shifts to Robert, and while Dive has "Bafta prize winner" written all over it, part of me hopes that it doesn’t take a prize. It might just spoil Savage. BBC Two should be where writers and directors are allowed to experiment, and while this is a considerable improvement on his banking crisis drama Freefall, I don’t think he’s quite yet found his natural style. It will come, and if Dive is given too many garlands, there’s always a danger it might just encourage all that piano and violin and grandiose landscapes at the expense of what was really worthwhile here.

• Watch Dive on BBC iPlayer