Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10

Cast:  David Morrissey, Ian Hart, Colm Meaney, Claudie Blakley, Darren Morfitt, Sacha Parkinson, Lee Ross, Harish Patel, Lewis Rainer, Andrew Tiernan, Chris Coghill, Shaun Dingwall, Andrew Knott, Nathan McMullen, Ciara Baxendale, Leanne Best, Dominic Coleman, Rick Bacon, Emma Bispham, Karl Collins, Alan Rothwell.

The British gangster drama, whether on television or in the cinema has never really captured the days of Brighton Rock with Richard Attenborough and William Hartnell or the fantastic The Long Good Friday with the much missed Bob Hoskins    and the excellent Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Since those days of cinematic greats the genre seems to have become too safe, it has waved a white flag in surrender to its American counterpart.

Hopes were perhaps high that The Driver might have bucked the trend and yet somehow, despite the kind of start that Lewis Hamilton would have enjoyed as he strove to regain the Formula One Racing Championship, it somehow managed to chug to the finishing line with fumes coming out of the end, its tyres ripped apart and with the championship trophy being polished for someone else.

For a British drama to have three acting heavyweights, men who can command theatre or film audiences with just a twinkle in their eye and to be surrounded by such sheer talent in the likes of the superb Leanne Best, rising star Sacha Parkinson, the ever enjoyable Lee Ross, Claudie Blakley and Shaun Dingwall alongside them and yet to be so utterly flat at the end, as unconvincing as a false Mancunian accent on a 90s stereotypical extra is perhaps the most disappointing television of 2014. This is made even more desolate when the viewer is reminded that the first two episodes of Danny Brocklehurst’s three part drama were on the verge of riveting, as close as a viewer could ask for in gripping B.B.C. drama.

To have the incredible aptitude of David Morrissey, the near legendary status of Colm Meaney and one of the finest actors of his time in Ian Hart, come to such a uninspiring conclusion is to perhaps feel at times that there is just far too much television being produced that at times is as unfulfilling as finding the only person willing to take you out for the night is the individual who hates you the most.

There were great moments throughout, however they were too few and far between. The dynamic between Ian Hart and David Morrissey was exceptional as viewers might expect for two actors that grew up together in the shadow of the Everyman Theatre Youth Theatre, the tension between them chilling and unsettling and yet the family side of David Morrissey’s Vince McKee was at times lacklustre and unbelievable. Despite the hardship they had faced in their son running away to join a community, the lack of true emotion in what they had faced together and what was about to happen was one that just didn’t ring true. Where the drama really shone was with the great chase scene at the start of the first episode and in the turning point in Vince’s life where two girls beat and robbed him of his night’s takings, in this the drama excelled.

It is a shame that the drama ran to three episodes, for two of those episodes The Driver was building up to be a speed fest, a true piece of television drama but somehow the brakes managed to go on by themselves, not quite car-crash television but certainly stalling badly at the lights with a tonne of traffic stuck behind it.

Ian D. Hall