Peter Mullan In The Fear. Picture from Channel 4.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Peter Mullan, Anastasia Hille, Harry Lloyd, Paul Nicholls, Demosthenes Chrysan, Dragos Bucar, Shaban Arifi, Julia Ragnarsson, Danny Sapani, Nigel Lindsay, Osy Ikhile, Sidney Kean, Lisa McAllister, Catherine Winter, Amarildo Kola.

Gone it seems, are the days of Pinkie Brown and the black and white days of the south coast’s criminal underbelly in Brighton Rock. Now the terrifying prospect of Eastern European gang culture rears in head in the seedy dangerous world of The Fear and it’s a far more dangerous world than teen hoodlum Pinkie could have ever have imagined.

It would be easy describe this latest British answer to Nordic Noir as Brighton Rock gone bad but its opening episode of gruesome warnings, crime boss turned legitimate businessman with a worrying and dreamlike lapse of focus as his brain starts to crumble as quick as his once powerful empire starts falling apart is not just bad, its captivating and more worryingly real that Graeme Green could have ever imagined.

From the very start of the episode, viewers are introduced to Ritchie Beckett, played with alarming brilliance by Peter Mullan, a man who for so long has had his own way in Brighton, but as his mental state starts to become erratic becomes a liability to himself and family, others in the form of his power hungry son Cal Beckett aims to make a deal with the new families in town and the world around him starts to disintegrate and fracture.

Portraying someone who has erred on the wrong side of the law but who you feel more sympathy for than those who commit some terrible atrocities in the opening episode is a big ask but Peter Mullan carries it off brilliantly. Supported by a superb cast, including the great Harry Lloyd, Paul Nicholls and Anastasia Hille makes for great television and even if the subject matter is off the scale in terms of disturbing it is brilliantly written, filmed in a way that old noir must have been craving to do and acted with frightening ferocity.

There is a new crime boss on the south coast of England and finally fans of British Noir, old and current, can replace the near 1930’s ideal of Brighton.

The Fear continues over the next three nights.

Ian D. Hall