TV Review: Fearless Episode 1

“You let a terrorist’s wife live in your home and you set a murderer free”

Fearless is a new six-part drama on ITV and whilst some people might be excited by the fact that it is written by one of the writers of Homeland (Patrick Harbinson), all right-thinking people will of course be psyched that it is giving Helen McCrory a stonking leading role. She plays human rights lawyer Emma Banville who is utterly unafraid to butt heads with the world as she investigates miscarriages of justice.

Her latest case draws her into the orbit of Kevin Russell (definite fave Sam Swainsbury) whose conviction for murder looks to be a little iffy. With perhaps a little too much ease, she finds it unsafe and secures a retrial but looks set to have opened up quite the can of national security-flavoured worms as a serious-looking transatlantic phone call on a secure line seems to suggest that there is much more to this than meets the eye.

And since we’re in brilliantly densely-plotted territory, Emma is also:

  • haunted by her past
  • adopting a child
  • sheltering a Syrian mother and child in her house
  • being surveilled by counter-terrorism forces

so there’s a lot to keep up with and a hundred ways in which it could all play out and it all feels marvellously unlike ITV (which is, granted, unfair as they also aired the brilliant Unforgotten). And boasting the likes of Michael Gambon, Wunmi Mosaku and Jemima Rooper in the supporting cast, it looks set to be a must-see bit of television, although I wouldn’t put it past them to have made it just a little frustrating in the vastness of its scope too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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