Five Days

Reports of the death of BBC drama have been greatly exaggerated. So things have been a bit slow recently – there’s a recession, for crying out loud. And you haven’t been able to open a paper over the last couple of months without reading another royal slagging off of beeb drama. However my faith has been restored with this month’s Five Days, written by Gwyneth Hughes. Over the course of one week five episodes charted the suicide of a mysterious woman in a burka. However first the audience is introduced to the idea it wasn’t suicide. Then we find out it wasn’t a woman, but a teenage boy in disguise.

With each episode there were new twists and coincidences, and every face holding a potential clue. Young boys on bikes in the first few scenes later hold video evidence that proves someone pushed the victim, and one of these later turns out to be the son of an investigating policeman.

Despite this drama being incredibly gripping, well crafted and with an excellent cast (Suranne Jones as a plucky-yet-lovable detective Laurie and Anne Reid as her mother Jen, in the early stages of dementia) some people are still not giving it a chance. Jeremy Clay for the Leicester Mercury claims that “to fill five hours of telly Hughes has knitted up the narrative thread into great clumps so she can spend five hours unravelling it all again.” This seems somewhat harsh; of course there are coincidences to pull the story together, and moments such as a white foster father having knowledge of which blood groups are most prevalent in the Asian community do seem contrived, but these blips are brief and overall the effect is tightly woven. As well as a thriling story of murder Hughes still managed to get the audience equally interested in a few budding romances, with some beautiful moments between Laurie’s mother Jen (Reid) and her new partner. There were also some genuinely funny moments among the tragedy – Laurie suggesting that she heard of how “some reporter wangled his way into Bagdad wearing a burka” to which her colleague replied dryly “Yeah, I’m not sure that’s a good tactic for wangling your way into Leeds.”

I look forward to Hughes’ next set of Five Days, and if I could ever write a drama like that I’d be pretty happy with myself.