A random selection from Britbox, five-parter Collision proves an engrossing take on the multi-strand drama
“You shouldn’t have been on the A12”
I couldn’t tell you exactly what drew me to finally get round to viewing 2009 ITV drama Collision, maybe some subliminal advertising from Britbox, but it was an entertaining watch nevertheless. Anthony Horowitz and Michael A Walker’s 5-parter focuses on a multi-vehicle car crash and as the police investigate what happened, they spin out a web of stories from the group of strangers now connected by this tragic event.
For this is no innocuous bunch of people, the secrets that drove them to this busy stretch of road run the whole gamut from government conspiracies to murder, people smuggling to annoying mothers-in-law (OK, maybe the last one isn’t so unique…). And the pileup puts a wrench in the works for many of them, especially now there’s increased attention from them, the police being particularly interested as they were engaged in a high speed chase at the time.
As per usual, the DI investigating the crash has a troubled past. He is on his first day back from some unspecified trauma and when he gets to the scene, the officer in charge is his estranged girlfriend which makes things more complicated. Fortunately, this strand isn’t too laboured – Douglas Henshall and Kate Ashfield have great chemistry – and doesn’t weigh too heavily on the case as a whole, mainly because those strands are so disparate.
Dean Lennox Kelly and Craig Kelly are good as shady brothers, Zoe Telford spikily effective as the latter’s wife; Paul McGann’s uber-rich Richard and Lucy Griffith’s service station waitress have an unlikely connection through their dissatisfaction with their lives; and Claire Rushbrook is excellent as would-be whistleblower Karen, urged on by Richard Harrington’s shady journalist. The various unravellings of the plots get increasingly melodramatic but it’s all rather good fun to watch.
