CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews The Game: Jason Watkins's golfing ex detective lifts this psycho thriller above par...
The Game (Ch5)
Was there ever a game invented more pointless than golf — the time-killing occupation that's apparently obligatory for every retired chap on TV?
Any gangster, business tycoon, politician or copper of a certain age plays golf. In television dramas, it's a handy setting for those crucial conversations that can't be overheard.
Real life is more mundane, naturally. You'll simply spend an entire morning hitting a ball repeatedly till it lands in a hole, then doing it again and again, 18 times over.
You'll walk miles but have to leave the dog at home. And if you discover, after the first ten minutes, that your companions are hideous bores, that's tough luck — you're stuck for the next three hours, listening to them complain about their teenage stepchildren or brag about their stock market investments.
The existence of golf is the chief reason I'd prefer to die in harness than ever retire. My resolve was stiffened by the plight of former Detective Inspector Huw Miller, played by Jason Watkins in The Game, whose life is empty after quitting the force.
Huw's wife is quickly so fed up of him moping around, under her feet, that she orders boxes of golf balls for him on Amazon. How's that for a hint?
At first, he plays a few rounds with his neighbour Frank (Gordon Kennedy). But Frank turns up dead in the bath, the victim of an apparent overdose.
My first thought was that too much golf had sapped him of the will to live.
Huw suspects murder — but then, he would. He's haunted by the one case he couldn't crack, a series of killings by a maniac dubbed the Ripton Stalker.
When an affable handyman named Patrick (Robson Green) buys Frank's house and starts flirting with the local housewives, Huw's suspicions run rampant.
The working title for The Game was Catch You Later, the sign-off used by the Stalker to taunt police.
And after a night at the pub, Patrick bids Huw goodnight with those mocking words: 'Catch you later.' An innocent remark, or the first move in a game of cat-and-mouse?
Robson, an actor who is never happier than when showing off his flirty twinkle, is perfectly cast as the smirking newcomer who just might be a psychopath.
We want to believe he's a murderer, but we also understand why Huw's wife (Sunetra Sarker) and all their friends are immediately charmed by him.
But it's Jason Watkins who lifts this four-part thriller above the level of standard schlock.
He has such emotional control in his fingertips that, when he twitches a net curtain, we can see both the meticulous detective and the nervous wreck whose career ended in failure and humiliation.
His former detective sergeant, Jenny Atkins (Amber James), gets him a pair of cheap cufflinks as a parting gift.
'I don't know what old men like,' she says, defensively. She should have bought him a packet of multi-coloured golf tees and some comic golfing socks. It's what retirement is for.
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