That's all within five minutes of Ronan Bennett's four-part conspiracy thriller Hidden (BBC1); a tangle of enigmas and loose ends so daunting that it seemed as if it might defy the efforts of anyone working alone. It's also in the past, 20 years ago, a splatter flashback, fired from an automatic weapon. It's a relief, therefore, when you finally come across a familiar face, the forbidding and deckled visage of Philip Glenister. Now in the present, we welcome the man who embodied a decade as Gene Hunt in Life on Mars, and who is always going to land a certain role. He’s got the face for it, like the Eiger in human form. He is the man who can never do his tie up right; the law man who doesn’t mind breaking the law. Here he reprises this role as Harry Venn, a down-on-his luck solicitor, with an eye for a pretty lady and a nose for a line of cocaine.
Naturally, Venn has an extremely Chandleresque office, from the frosted glass in the door to the glamorous dame who slinks in in episode one refusing to take no for an answer. Gina Hawkes says she's a lawyer. From Scandinavia by the sound of her. Lord knows who she is, even Harry can't figure that out, but she's pretty so he's interested, and helping her might lead to information about the death of his brother Mark. That's if Mark is dead. “I can tell you’re smart because you’re not drinking the coffee,” he said, and it’s a bit unfair to quote him on it because it was the worst line in the programme. But it stuck out because the rest of the script was pretty good.
Gina also has a Jessica Rabbit outfit, in which she turns up to a meeting with Harry at a smart London hotel, where she outlines her terms a little more fully and gets teasingly insinuating: "I deal in lost hopes, Mr Vann," she tells him, shortly before heading off somewhere so that he can bribe a hall porter and riffle through her room, where he discovers comprehensive files on all of those enigmas we saw at the beginning. Is Gina trying to set Harry up for a cold-case murder, or does she genuinely need his assistance? Either way, I fear that Harry is going to end up intimately entangled with her, because he seems to attract beautiful women like a shaggy dog attracts teasels. Bennett's drama began with him giving one weeping girl the brush-off and hadn't got a lot further before Harry was sharing a post-coital joint with his ex-wife. By the end, his barbed banter with Gina had taken on a flirtatious edge: "If ever I get in trouble, I'd want you as my lawyer, Gina," he said, "In fact, I'd get in trouble just to have you as my lawyer."
He's about to get himself involved in a very nefarious business, all because a man in prison reckons he has some information about said sibling's demise, or perhaps his living whereabouts. Harry, you see, has his own criminal past, which we saw in unnecessarily misty and lightly sepia-tinted flashbacks. A younger, slimmer Harry was the getaway driver for a botched robbery, in which his brother had apparently died. Now the older, fatter Harry wants answers so he took the job from Quirke. When Harry tells the scared prison inmate: "You give me a call when you decide you want to tell me what the fuck is going on," I'm shouting at the telly: "Yeah, me too Stevie, you give me a call and tell me what the fuck is going on and all." But we knew and he knew that it did not smell good.
Meanwhile this all played out against the backdrop of a rather familiar Britain. Political scandal, economic crisis, and civil unrest rock the country. Hold up, this must have all been wrapped up well before August; did Bennett know it was coming? Or start it, perhaps, to give his drama added authenticity. A beleaguered Prime Minister is struggling to form a coalition as riots broke out across London, and protestors marched against the cuts. While the PM battled his critics, rival Alexander Wentworth closes in, helped along by a sinister pair who slipped him an envelope of “facts to put Worsley in his political grave”. "There are some people backed by certain media organisations with their own agenda who simply do not want to see a second coalition," the posh underfire PM tells Sky News's Adam Boulton (the real one).
The only link between the plots so far is that they were both in the same programme. But we were given a hint of things to come when Worsley continues: “There are people who do not want political stability who would prefer uncertainty and disorder.” This being a conspiracy thriller, he sounded more like he was delivering a plot point, than clutching at straws to save his political career.
Crucially, we'll be back next week, in search of clarity and answers. Because Hidden has so much to recommend. It's murky, atmospheric, intriguing. Glenister is fabulous as Harry, who has something of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe about him – a big tough guy, and a shagger, but also self-destructive and vulnerable. This is a far more interesting and real character than his cartoonish cliche-shouting Gene Hunt. And the dialogue in this is great – these people talk like real people talk.
Oh, and the whole thing ended with a bang when Harry’s office blew up behind him.
Television Series: Hidden (S01E01)
Release Date: October 2011
Actress: Lisa Kay
Video Clip Credit: DeepAtSea
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