Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Neil Dudgeon, Gwilym Lee, Fiona Dolman, Majinder Virk, Tessa Peake-Jones, Joe McGann, Julia Sawalha, Edward Akrout, Hari Dhillion, Sophia Di Martino, Richard Graham, Rebecca Grant, Ben Lamb, Derek Riddell, Jack Staddon, Olivia Vinall, Tom York.

Competitive cycling has had its detractors over the years, it has its champions, its heroes and its fallen idols, the gold body supported by the lead base and the fragile Earth beneath and yet the spanner always finds a way to throw itself into the works and take the sport down a slippery slope in which one could not easily fathom.

Midsomer Murders has had its fair share of goings on, of rivalries and jealousy’s played out but the latest episode, Breaking The Chain ventured into an arena in which many might find tarnished a sport still reeling from the disgrace that Lance Armstrong has brought to it and to whom the likes of Bradley Wiggins are constantly battling to make it clean and enjoyable once again. Death drives a stick a times, it can also handle a pair of thin wheels as well it seems.

One of the simple, yet exhilarating, pleasures of life is watching an actor totally at ease with the character they are playing. Whether on screen or in the theatre, it is that sincerity in the part that makes them stand-out and make the audience member want to follow their career with interest. For Olivia Vinall this especially true, an ability to show and revel in the light whilst hiding the shadow and the dark within an arduous and intricate obligation in which many succeed but few excel at. Like the turning of Jekyll and Hyde, the two personalities never meet but grind against each other like tectonic plates, the movement slow, unseen but explosive and dangerous when finally released.

Breaking The Chain framed the issues facing competitive sport with precision, the envy and the desire to win at all cost crossing the boundaries between acceptability and fruitless devious means, the mirroring of cheating at sport and at life was one that showed just how low some can sink in their relentless pursuit of the glittering, tarnished prize.

Ian D. Hall