Secret Smile   Starring: David Tennant, Kate Ashfield and Claire Goose ITV DVD RRP: £10.99 3711531633 Certificate: 15 Available 29 June 2009

When Miranda attends her friend David’s birthday, at an ice rink, she meets the charismatic Brendan Block; the two immediately hit it off, but ten days into their relationship she returns home to discover that Brendan has gone through her stuff. She ends their relationship and thinks nothing of it until her sister later announces that she has met a new man and that he is one of her ex’s. When Miranda discovers that it is Brendan she suspects him of trying to get at her through her family, but Brendan has so impressed the whole family that no one will believe her. Things change when her brother kills himself and the tainted relationship between Brendan and Miranda spirals out of control...

Secret Smile (2005 - 2 hr, 16 min) is a two part ITV drama starring David Tennant, Claire Goose and Kate Ashfield. The show was directed by Christopher Menaul (Prime Suspect (1991), Fatherland (1994)), from a script by Nicci Gerrard, Sean French and Kate Brooke. The show was based on the book of the same name by Nicci French.

First a word of warning for any parents who missed this the first time round and thinks that it would be a good purchase for their Doctor Who obsessed sprogs. This is a drama with adult themes, some nudity and your favourite Doctor saying very rude words.

David Tennant plays the creepy Brendan who squirrels his way into the affections of Miranda’s sister, Kerry (Claire Goose), her manic depressive brother Troy and her parents. It’s a role which he plays worryingly well. Given what he says to Miranda (Kate Ashfield) - no, it’s not repeatable, but it is gross - during the engagement barbeque I’m pretty glad I didn’t see this before watching him in Doctor Who - I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to view him the same way again. Kate Ashfield plays the increasingly distressed, obsessed and paranoid Miranda, convinced that Brendan is up to no good. But every time she tries to warn those she loves, Brendan is able to turn things around to make it look like Miranda is suffering from jealousy.

The plot twists and turns until the surprise ending. Overall it’s a well constructed drama with one major fault. In a good psychological drama the audience has to have credible doubt about both Miranda and Brendan’s motives. Is Miranda really jealous and viewing all of Brendan’s actions from this perspective? Is Brendan as well meaning as her family think? These should be answers which the audience should struggle with for the majority of the drama, so I’m at a loss to understand why the writers felt the need to let the audience know that Brendan was no good so early in the first episode.

What you do get is the battle of wills between the two. However, as you know that Brendan is a bad egg a lot of the tension and surprise is removed from the drama. There is still some nice interplay between the two main characters, in this slickly directed show and both are pretty good in their respective roles, especially after she suspects that Brendan has had a hand in her brother’s suicide. At this point, obsessed at proving Brendan’s guilt, she starts to play Brendan at his own dangerous game.

Sad to say that the disc is of the vanilla sort, so it has no extras. But both picture and sound are clean, as it should be, the show isn’t that old.

So, a good drama, it’s a shame that the cat is let out of the bag so soon.

6

Charles Packer