Payback is the televisual equivalent of a sudoku puzzle or a crossword. It keeps your mind happily occupied without demanding any emotional investment whatsoever. This is mostly because it is about fraud and gangland criminals so – in the best possible way – who cares? A daughter gets threatened from afar but, you know, that’s just how gangland criminals roll. There are no missing or abused children, no gruesome murders, no raped, battered then murdered women. With only an untraceable £28m at stake, it’s practically a romcom.
Life is going along quite nicely for the Noble family. Husband Jared (Thoren Ferguson) and wife Lexie (Morven Christie) are hardworking accountants – she’s a partner at his firm – who live in a lovely house and have recently taken on a competent if sullen nanny Doris (Eileen Duffy) to help with the care of their two children, neither of whom has ever been threatened by a gangland criminal. All that, alas, is about to change because over on the other side of town, a man called Cal Morris (Peter Mullan) is trying and failing to buy an island with laundered cash. I think. I confess that despite many exposition-heavy scenes involving well-meaning characters who clearly do understand how the money is supposed to have got from A to B but instead went missing and want us to understand too, I do not. But it is enough to know that it has done, that Jared is involved and that Lexie knows nothing about it.
She doesn’t know she knows nothing about it until Jared is stabbed in the street in an apparently motiveless attack. Unable to track the missing payment without details to which only his accountant was privy, Cal turns his attention to Mrs Accountant and has his right-hand man Malky (Steven Mackintosh – oh yes, they’re all in it!) encourage her to seek them out. As luck would have it, she recently found a safe full of passwords and lists of transactions behind the riojas in the wine cellar and may be able to help.
But! The police have her house under audio surveillance. They know the sound of dirty account books being withdrawn from behind a dozen robust reds when they hear it, and soon Lexie finds herself caught between a rock and a hard place. Also, the marital assets have been frozen, so she is dependent on Cal’s cash handouts until this can all be sorted, which may skew things somewhat.
On the other hand, someone had Jared killed, so maybe they have the money and all Lexie’s efforts will be for naught?
Payback moves at a fair old clip, as you would expect with something bred by the Jed Mercurio production stable. It grew out of discussions between him and writer Debbie O’Malley and has enough momentum to get past a few minor holes without difficulty (though the coincidence involving Jared’s hoodie, popped on by his grieving widow for comfort, only to find the exact account details she needs clearly written on a scrap of paper in the pocket is … quite something).
It’s not going to set the world on fire or go down in television history, but it is one of those dramas that offers the inordinate pleasure of watching quality, understated actors do their quality understated work, without a weak link among them. There’s Morven Christie, completely believable as an ordinary woman – bit anxious, bit tired, head down, getting on with things, happy enough, solid husband to catch her if she falls – caught up in a completely unbelievable situation. There’s Derek Riddell just being the detective in charge of keeping an investigation that threatens to sprawl out of everyone’s control contained. There’s Steven Mackintosh embodying the beta vibe and careful cruelty of the natural-born lackey. And then there’s Peter Mullan, exuding the kind of casual, ingrained menace that crime lords must, surely, have. There is also Julie Graham as Cal’s wife Connie and by God, if she is not given more to do in the coming episodes I shall be writing to Equity or my MP or Reese Witherspoon or something because this kind of unnatural wastage must not go unchallenged. If she gets to let rip in the remainder, I’ll add another star to my rating.
Payback aired on ITV1 and is available on ITVX.
