One Night

One Night is a new 4-parter on BBC1.  It's being shown over 4 nights, at the impossibly late start time of 10.35pm (for a school night), so before we'd seen any episodes we wondered whether the BBC was trying to bury it.  There are no details on IMDB, for example....

Against these expectations, it's actually really good.

The show follows the events of one night, with each episode following a different protagonist (like... 'Titanic'!).  It's set in London in an area where Lakemead, a large council estate, borders on some large, expensive, owner-occupied houses.  The first episode followed Ted (Douglas Hodge) who lives in one of the houses and got into a confrontation with some of the kids from the estate.  As the episode progressed to his barbeque dinner party the tone became slightly awkward - more Mike Leigh than Spike Lee - but overall it was a very convincing and well-acted drama.

The escalation of events was very plausible; in fact the only real TWNH was that the police would still have come quickly even if someone tried to cancel a 999 call: this is standard procedure, in case intimidation has taken place.

The big shame of this show is that it's on so late.  Maybe Danny Cohen just didn't like it  - perhaps it was commissioned before he became head of BBC1? - or maybe it tails off in later episodes.  We'll see.