If it’s Sunday – or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday – it must be time for a serviceable new thriller starring Richard Armitage. They’re usually on Netflix and adapted from a Harlan Coben bestseller (The Stranger, Stay Close, Fool Me Once); though they’re also sometimes on Netflix and adapted from a Josephine Hart novel (Damage, renamed Obsession for TV). This time, he is serviceably thrilling on ITV1 and ITVX in Red Eye, written by Peter A Dowling (with Jingan Young taking on episode four).
Armitage is Dr Matthew Nolan, first seen stumbling out of a Beijing nightclub with a knife wound, before smashing his car into a traffic barrier in an attempt, one assumes, to avoid another stabbing. Viewerly interest piqued, we cut to him arriving at Heathrow and promptly being arrested – or whatever variation these border agents perform – for the killing of a young woman who was in his car when it crashed. She was the daughter of a Party general and, in order not to jeopardise a fragile energy deal with China, the government agrees to send him straight back there to answer the charges.
