For all of the breathless acclaim directed at Chicago-set kitchen drama The Bear, it was Philip Barantini’s Dalston-set equivalent Boiling Point from a year before that truly captured the heat and horror of working in a restaurant. Filmed in one continuous take, it was both technical triumph and masterclass in high-wire suspense, fumbling perhaps in its final overblown moments, but involving enough that by the end, you felt as exhausted as a pot washer ending a busy shift.
Before Barantini’s much-anticipated sequel series comes to the BBC later this year, he’s crafted a thriller of much higher stakes, an almost unbearably tense film about the terror of being subjected to a social media witch-hunt. Accused is a smartphone spin on the age-old wrongly accused subgenre and takes place over just one day as a Londoner’s mundane life descends into chaos that’s mostly awfully easy to believe.
