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A failing coalition government? Rioting in London? What is this strange, fictional version of Britain? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s the setting for Philip Glenister’s new BBC1 thriller, Hidden, his first TV work since the crushingly disappointing final series of Ashes to Ashes. But was it any good? Well, I’ll try to tell you.
Glenister plays Harry Venn, a solicitor with a dodgy past (such an imaginative creation…). He, for a reason that is yet to be made clear, is approached by a lawyer, Gina Hawkes (Thekla Reuten), who wants him to help find a witness for the case she’s working on. Of course, it turns out that said witness was involved in Venn’s dodgy past, leading to a confused and, as such, confusing hour of television.
Hidden is certainly an apt title for this series, as there is an enticing story hidden away somewhere in the chaotic assembly of ideas that it is, but I would be surprised if anyone could be bothered to track it down. Sure, the synopsis above seems simple enough, but the writer, Ronan Bennett, got a bit big for his boots and tried to pull off too much. One minute, Venn was searching for a witness, then we’d flashed back to his criminal past, then he was in bed with his ex-wife, then he was trying to build bridges with his son... It was, in short, a mess.
Many writers nowadays seem to believe that every TV show has to be impossibly complex, but complexity is a difficult thing to pull off. When it works, you get something like State of Play or the Danish version of The Killing. But there’s only one series like that every couple of years, and Hidden had just set its sights too high. Had it been reined in, allowing the simple concept to grow into something compulsive and intriguing, it would have worked a lot better. Instead, the central story was so sidelined that Venn only had time to (rather half-heartedly) ask a couple of people if they’d seen the witness, but didn’t actually find anything out. Because that really wants to make you watch the next episode.
Surprisingly, there was another big problem with Hidden, and it was one that I hadn’t even considered would be a problem: Philip Glenister himself. Now, nobody enjoyed watching Gene Hunt fighting crime in Camberwick Green more than I did, but Gene was such a career-defining role that it made Venn seem a bland and undemanding one in comparison. Also, despite Glenister being a Southerner, his Southern accent is less convincing than his Northern one, and in Hidden’s shouty scenes, he did seem to lapse into Gene before remembering where he was and throwing in an overdone Southern vowel for good measure.
This all ensured that Hidden was one of the most disappointing BBC1 dramas of the year, and I would forecast a strong ratings drop-off for episode 2. Perhaps the only interesting thing about Hidden was the bleached colour palette which, to me, represented how all the life, and potential, had been sucked out of it, transforming it into something forgettable, uninvolving, and downright dull.
Hidden continues Thursday 9pm BBC1.
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