The Watchman

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Carl (Stephen Graham) operates CCTV in a little centre all alone. Feeling pretty isolated, his only communication is with his friend Lee (Kieran O'Brien) over the cameras, and taking calls home from his troubled teenage daughter. His mundane existence is spiced up a little one night when he has to deal with a woman who is threatening to jump off the top of a building. But this is just the beginning of a terrifying night where he'll have to save Lee from a gang of drug dealers who have a score to settle with a two grand debt.

As the most heavily watched country in Europe, if not the world, CCTV permeates pretty much every facet of existence, and can cover many vast areas. The likes of Carl must exist all over the place, and Graham's portrayal must be typical of the sort that tend to work in jobs like these. It's the perfect setting for a 'real time' thriller, and like the best of them, it's (in this case very) short and sweet. As events are playing out literally as they're happening, it's a result like no other and The Watchman produces fairly hit and miss results.

The mood is impressively dark and grey, with the camera blurred out throughout, which perfectly encapsulates the grim, foreboding world the main character inhabits. There is also a genuine sense of tension and unpredictability about how events will turn out. But it's all also a little untidy, with the woman's suicide bid at the beginning not really tying in with the main story as a whole, as well as an ending that's meant to come off as unexpected and classy, but just leaves you with a sense of confusion and inconclusion.

It's still a generally decent effort, though, with lead star Graham perfectly suited to the role and an impressive air of mystery. ***

3 out of 10. for Stephen Graham's performance which is always stellar. the rest of this TV drama was rubbish though. the family he had were of no significance and annoyingly distracting, the thugs you just wanted Stephens alter ego from This Is England to unleash itself and unleash wrath on the teenager oiks. plus with all the footage he had of the deals, of the drugs bag, of the car license plates etc, going to the scene of his friends capture himself made no sense to me. Or why his character felt it necessary to return a bag to stop a teenaged oik who was involved in drugs from getting hurt. a lot of this drama had lots of plot holes imho.

In the UK, for many Stephen Graham can do no wrong. He has a good list of films & TV shows under his belt many of which some would crave to even have just one of them, be it the excellent This Is England film or Boardwalk Empire.

He looks and acts like your blue collar man, and you know what, he does it well. Here he again plays another foot soldier at ground level, acting as a surveillance man who gets involved one night shift as he sees drug dealers on the cameras and decides to take action. As you can guess it has dark overtones, and add in his family dysfunctions coming on board, it's a powder-keg.

It's dark, it's gripping, it's grim and you just don't really know how it plays out. It's all about Stephen Graham here and he carries it brilliantly.

The problem is that it needs further time and more fattening out. The ending which I won't spoil is clearly a homage to a famous cult movie for the British film viewers, and really doesn't fully work here.

It's a fine, interesting and challenging story. You'll find it worth a viewing.