The Fear

The gangsters in Graham Green's 1950's classic Brighton Rock seem almost cuddly and lovable in comparison with their modern day counterparts in The Fear.

Neatly suited and booted wide boys cutting each other's cheeks with razors, and reliable, honest detectives have been replaced by slimy bent coppers and hoards of swarthy, Eastern European thugs setting off car bombs and hacking each other's body parts off with industrial-sized meat cleavers.

Channel 4's latest four part drama opens as local crime boss turned businessman Richie Beckett drives home from a fund raising event at Brighton Pier. When a passing unicyclist (yes, I did say unicyclist) thoughtlessly leans on his nice shiny limo, Richie jumps out of the car and beats the poor guy to within an inch of his life.

Only a few short moments after the attack, Richie seems to remember nothing about it. Is he suffering from memory loss? Maybe early-onset Alzheimer's? Or does Richie just have a pathological dislike of unicyclists? One thing's for sure, this is going to be no ordinary gangster series.

Richie is brilliantly played by Peter Mullan, who has kicked around TV drama for many years and deserves to be a lot better known than he is. You might remember him playing Gordon Brown in The Trial of Tony Blair. Mullan walks a tantalising tightrope between likable vulnerability and terrifying menace, and it's hard to take your eyes off the screen when he's on. There's also a nice little cameo by one of my favourite actors Richard E. Grant as Richie's suave but decidedly dodgy doctor.

Things get nasty when Richie's son Cal (played by former Eastenders regular Paul Nicholls) gets more than a little out of his depth with a bunch of newly imported Albanian hard men who want to take over his dad's seaside patch.

This is bad news for Richie's wife Jo (Anastasia Hille). She thought Richie's gangster days were long gone and she now runs a trendy Brighton art gallery. The last thing she wants is a load of claret being splattered all over her nice expensive paintings.

Cal's brother Matty tries to make peace with the Albanians, and all he gets is beaten up for his trouble. But there is far, far worse to come.

Escalating violence and Richie's rapid descent into a twilight world of frustration and confusion make The Fear one of the most compelling and addictive television dramas of 2012. It's jam-packed with great performances and stunning visuals, and Richard Cottan's script is fresh and original. Michael Samuels directs with considerable flair and style and is clearly a name to watch out for in future.

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As others have said, Peter Mullan was brilliant.

I enjoyed this series, although 4 episodes was plenty. I was rapidly tiring of Richie's hallucinations (which became repetitive).

I'm no medical expert, by my understanding of Alzheimer's is that it is a fairly gradual decline. Richie seemingly went from having a mild cognitive impairment, to being almost fully incapacitated in a matter of days?

When I stumbled on to this show I was very hopeful and excited- Peter Mullan playing an aging crime boss, set in the UK , with other good actors in it too. I was hoping for a Brit version of "The Sopranos", and I "sort of" got it; Sopranos if produced by Lifetime network, maybe.

Mullan is of course great as usual, unfortunately the writing is not. I had recently watched an Aussie series called "Wentworth" which was great, gritty and realistic, so it didn't help that I had been reminded of how good shows could actually be.

Early in the first episode we see Mullan beat a guy to a pulp for touching his car, and also for riding a unicycle, like a nerd. Next we are introduced to the "Fredo" of the family, he is a not too good looking guy with an ugly affinity for under aged girls. At this point it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this guy will be punished, and if pedo-looking uni cyclists are any harbinger we can assume that punishment will be severe. I was already half expecting a mannish looking lady cop to jump out and start kicking him in the testicles.

Next, they show Mullen groveling as he practically begs his wife to "allow" him to get into bed with her. No matter that she is is aloof, insulting, and condescendingly belittles Mullen, refusing his request with a Hillary-esque eye roll ("you stink" she cleverly quips). He has apparently provided her with a mansion worth millions or tens of millions, set her up with a "business"-i.e. art gallery, so she can pretend to do real work, and his given her two sons however nebulous one or both might be. Oh yea, she is cheating with multiple men including so called "artists" who likely don't do any real work either.

Note to the writers- putting lipstick and designer eye wear on a skinny elderly actress does not morph her into a hottie, and if Mullen was going to be portrayed begging they should have at least cast an actress born after The Beatles hit US shores. At this point, the show lost all credibility as well as this viewer, as I just could not buy a cuckolded Tony Soprano even if it was Brit style. Oh well, maybe there is something better on The Oxygen Network.

It's an overused statement, but this is what quality drama is about. The background story about the dodgy businessman attempting to revitalise Brighton pier is merely a vehicle for the real drama of a man falling apart and the effects it has on his family and those around him. It really is that simple and, with a lesser cast and production crew, this could have been a dull and forgettable hour or 2 at best. Not so when you have quality like this.

Peter Mullan is, as always, superb and flawlessly captures both the simmering violent tendencies of a controlling businessman-gangster and the pathetic ramblings and loneliness of a man who can't understand what's happening to him. He showed a brief version of how good he is at the latter in Session 9 some years ago and this performance only serves to show just how good he is at this.

The supporting cast are excellent too - not a single weak link in this at all.

If there was one flaw it's that the Eastern European characters don't have the depth they could have. However, they're suitable frightening and the patriarchal figure is underplayed to just the right degree. No pantomime villains here.

Overall...this shows that some TV drama is better than the dross that costs millions and is chucked out to the big-screen multiplexes

Peter Mullan gave a stunning performance in a series which just dragged on too long. The flashbacks would have been better as a prologue at the beginning as they became boring to the point of being really annoying. I know that the intent was to show Richie losing his mind, but the four part series could have been reduced to two hours with no loss.

Two things puzzled me: why did no one turn the illegal immigrant gangsters into the police/immigration service, then they would have been rid of them? and the progression of Ritchie's Alzheimer's Disease must have been the fastest on record. My observation of dementia and Alzheimer's has been that it takes years rather than days.

Overall, 'The Long Good Friday' did it better.