Of all the UK’s terrestrial channels, ITV is most like the streaming giant Netflix. Both broadcasters create shows governed by a pulpy, prurient sensibility, propositioning the public with middling primetime thrills. Coldwater, a new six-part drama on ITV, follows in the aesthetic footsteps of The Sister, The Suspect, and Passenger, evoking a hyperbolic, over-saturated world where sinister forces are always just around the corner.
Andrew Lincoln is John, a middle-class Londoner whose gentle life is shattered by a violent episode at a playground. John runs from the incident – abandoning his nine-year-old daughter in the process – and the debilitating guilt he feels leads to the family, including wife Fiona (Indira Varma), moving to the remote Scottish village of Coldwater. There, John and Fiona fall in with their new next-door neighbours: vicar Rebecca (Eve Myles) and her slippery, God-fearing husband, Tommy (Ewen Bremner). “Don’t forget what happened to Jonah,” Tommy warns John. “He kept running away from God and ended up in the belly of a fish!” But John is tired of running, and an unlikely friendship begins between the two men. Naturally, it isn’t long before tragedy strikes and the true colours of this close-knit community begin to show.
