Collision ITV1's All-Star Drama – Review

New Five-Parter by Foyle’s War creator Anthony Horowitz

Nov 7, 2009

Douglas Henshall, Paul McGann and Phil Davis star in a new series about the after-shocks from a highway pile-up.

Car-crash telly gets a sobering new meaning in ITV1’s intriguing, multi-stranded drama exploring how an everyday road journey can devastate lives.

This is what ITV calls event drama – with some justification. It has a stellar British cast, is the creation of multi-talented and multi-successful writer Anthony Horowitz, and dominates ITV1’s schedule by being told over five consecutive week nights.

Everyone passes a road smash at some time, but Horowitz makes the viewer stop and look at the emotional turmoil amid the twisted metal of one pile-up on the A12 (a road he travels along often from Suffolk to London).

Fatal Smash-up

Episode one is told in reverse as detective inspector John Tolin (Primeval’s Douglas Henshall) is brought in to investigate the fatal multi-vehicle crash – or to ‘cover our backs’, as Tolin puts it, as it is thought a police chase may be the accident’s cause. The detective has also just returned to work after losing his wife and having his daughter crippled by a drunk driver.

The drama then traces the immediate lead-up to the collision in the lives of the victims.

For the sake of the drama they are a fairly shifty bunch, including brothers Jeff and Dan (real-life siblings Craig and Dean Lennox Kelly), who are using their van for a dodgy pick-up from Holland, and personal assistant Karen (Claire Rushbrook), whose proactive approach to her job includes stealing files from her boss’s computer.

Phil Davis and Sylvia Syms

Phil Davis (The Fixer, Desperate Romantics, Whitechapel) plays put-upon Brian, whose marriage to Christine (Jan Francis) is being ruined by his live-in mother-in-law, Joyce (Sylvia Syms). He lies about where he taking her before they get caught in the smash-up.

David Bamber, brilliant as oily characters such as Hitler in Valkyre and Mr Collins in BBC1's Pride and Prejudice, is piano teacher Sidney, who is seen furtively swapping a DVD with an internet chum.

Also on the road to disaster are property tycoon Richard (Paul McGann, one-time Doctor Who and star of Withnail and I) and young lovers Alice (Lenora Crichlow) and Gareth (Anwar Lynch). Meanwhile, Jane (Lucy Griffiths), a motorway services worker who, unsurprisingly, dreams of a better life, is nearby.

Anthony Horowitz

A hell of a lot is going on in this opener, but Horowitz has not succeeded as the author of the Alex Rider series of novels and 50 other books, as well TV’s Foyle’s War, without honing the skill to deftly establish a gallery of characters with the minimum of narrative flab.

The collision, eerily accompanied by a plaintive Chopin piano Prelude, conveniently freezes the action at the end of episode one, leaving everyone’s story dangling between death, having their secrets exposed and survival.

Its cause and the victims’ secret motives amount to a pile-up of mysteries that will keep viewers belted to their seats for the five-night duration.

McGann's Real-Life Accident

Horowitz has always been interested in car accidents and had the idea for this about 10 years ago. The crash is a theme that should resonate with viewers, particularly in such a speeding, character-packed drama. Everyone travels by road at some time, everyone has rubber-necked other people’s smash-ups, few contemplate being in one.

It certainly made the cast reflect on life behind the wheel. Paul McGann knows what it is like to cheat death in an accident. Around 16 years ago he was on holiday in Spain when he went off a bridge with his brother, Joe, in the car. He still has flashbacks and has since taken advanced driving courses.

In publicity material for the series, he says, ‘I think you cheat death and it is really alarming. I remember weeks later, when I saw my brother again, bursting into tears, because shock takes a long time to work out, thinking that we could have lost each other.‘

'It has been terrifying for me'

Phil Davis is also quoted: ‘I drive on the A12 all the time, which is where some of this was filmed, because my 12-year-old son lives in Suffolk with his mum. My heart beats faster every time I go on that road, especially after making this drama. It has been terrifying for me.

‘When you pass an accident on the motorway you think there but for the grace of god go I, and it is scary. A lot of people are killed in accidents and they don’t know what caused it.’

This being fiction, the cause is eventually revealed but not until the end of Friday night’s episode.

The copyright of the article Collision ITV1's All-Star Drama – Review in British TV is owned by Robin Jarossi. Permission to republish Collision ITV1's All-Star Drama – Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.