If your stomach is still in knots after the weekend’s football drama, or your adrenalin is already starting to kick in ahead of Wednesday’s semi-final, I have just the thing to take your mind off it. Unfortunately, I can’t promise Channel 5’s new thriller The Night Caller will do anything for your nerves.
In fact, when you find out that the final instalment of this four-parter actually clashes with England’s match against the Dutch masters, there’s even a chance it will send you into a rage.
There would be an element of poetry in that though. The Night Caller is all about the frustrations of the ordinary man, forced to suffer the consequences of decisions made by the powers that be.
It’s also what we'd call a slow-burner. If you watched the opener last night, you may have been tempted to bail out after ten minutes due to the lack of action and the unrelenting despair on show. Leaving early would have been a mistake. It all kicked off spectacularly at the end of the episode and, having watched all four, I am able to tell you that this pattern is repeated throughout.
Building up the tension night after night, while occasionally letting a little steam out, is a difficult trick for a TV drama to pull off. The Night Caller well and truly nails it — although you will no doubt find yourself yelling "Oh, as if!" on more than one occasion. The last time I found myself so on edge while watching a TV show was during this year’s final of The Traitors.
It helped that I was able to watch The Night Caller without any ad breaks. It was also useful that I hadn’t seen the 30-second Channel 5 trailer for it before I hit play.
Now, I know the point of a trailer is to persuade you to watch, but this one is so full of spoilers it could easily backfire. It doesn’t ruin all of the suspense, but it does give you a lot of unnecessary clues as to what is coming. Avoid it if you can.
Read more: Why did Michael Palin leave the BBC for Channel 5?
And before you say it’s my fault for watching Channel 5 live, there’s actually some good stuff on there. That Richard & Judy documentary was a cracker for a start. (NOTE: At this point this review could easily descend into an 800-word appreciation of Richard Madeley’s choice of Wrangler T-shirts, so we’d best get back to The Night Caller.)
The story is a familiar one, having clearly taken its inspiration from the likes of stalker movies such as Play Misty For Me and Misery, and man-pushed-over-the-edge hits such as Falling Down and Taxi Driver.
There’s a modern twist to it as well, focusing as it does on the increasing influence of shock jock radio and TV presenters — and the potential dangers of that influence, for both presenter and listener/viewer. You could have fun speculating exactly which real life media loudmouth the shock jock is based on, by the way. Unfortunately everyone at Channel 5 is remaining tightlipped — and, for legal reasons, so am I.
Funnily enough, like Robert De Niro in the Scorsese classic, the main character in The Night Caller happens to be a taxi driver. Tony Conroy (Robert Glenister) is a former teacher who is now driving a black cab for a living on the murky twilight streets of Liverpool.
We first meet him in the opening shots. He’s standing in the shower washing oceans of blood from various head wounds. So, we already know it’s not a comedy.
Through flashbacks which appear to show a lifeless pupil in a swimming pool, we're given some clues as to why Tony is no longer a teacher. We then discover he did “Twenty-seven years' loyal service, so they could just throw me on the scrapheap." Sadly, the only person Tony seems to be able to tell this to is the late night radio phone-in host he listens to while out cabbing.
The rest of Tony’s time appears to be split between doing endless lengths at his local pool and boiling countless eggs back at his soulless yet spotless one-bedroomed flat. Glenister is superb in the role, fully conveying the pain, frustration, futile hope and simmering rage of a later life scrapheap-dweller.
He was no doubt helped by the fact he spent most of the seven week shoot behind the wheel of Tony’s cab, immersing himself in his world. "I loved it and I got quite good at pressing the fare button casually,” Glenister recalled. “I could do it without looking!” (Ooh, get him — the Ivan Toney of the taxi world.)
The one ray of sunshine in Tony’s life is provided by Rosa (Suzanne Packer), the waitress at the all-night cafe which the cabbies frequent. There’s an obvious romantic spark between them, but things are complicated by Rosa’s violent gangster ex. You can probably already see where this is heading.
Even if you can’t, it is spelled out very clearly by the voice that keeps telling Tony, “You know what happens when you keep it all in. There comes a point where you just explode.” (Oh, now I see why there are so many portentous shots of boiling eggs!)
The voice is provided by Lawrence Brightway, the host of Night Talk. You don’t need a Channel 5 trailer to tell you that Lawrence might be a wrong ‘un. You just need the fact that he calls everyone “mate”.
However, Sean Pertwee plays him with such a clever mix of menace and sincerity he keeps you guessing for quite a while. But will the penny drop for Tony? And if and when it does, how might he react?
I’m not going to give too much away here. Let’s just say “eggs, pan, boiling water” and leave it at that.
The Night Caller continues nightly on Channel 5 until Wednesday.
(You can also watch it on My5, BUT NOT UNTIL IT’S BEEN ON TELLY - AAAARGH!!!)
