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.
