The Drowning on Channel 5 review: Jill Halfpenny is compelling as a grieving mother in this gripping thriller

A well-paced, twist-laden script and strong performances make The Drowning a compulsive watch - even if it does stretch our credulity

If you want your psychodrama to pique the interest of TV commissioners, you’d be well advised to stick ‘ing’ in the title. From The Killing to The Missing to The Undoing, christening your moody thriller with a gloomy gerund has become a prerequisite, just like ponderous flashbacks and unreliable protagonists with drinking problems.

Channel 5’s The Drowning is a new addition to this sub-genre, starring Jill Halfpenny as Jodie, whose young son Tom disappeared on a family trip to a lake, an event which plays out in the first episode’s opening moments. Soft focus shots of mother and child quickly give way to a montage of meaningful looks, flies circling picnics, and other signposts of domestic bliss gone horribly awry.

As we jump forward almost a decade into the present day, Jodie is still reckoning with her loss, and her new life has been built on shaky foundations. Her business is failing, the bank keeps calling about her overdraft, her husband has left her (for her former best friend, no less) and the blame game over who should have been watching Tom on that ill-fated day out has left her estranged from most of her relatives (who seem to prefer her ex, anyway).

Though her son is presumed drowned, there are enough question marks hanging over the case - there was, we learn, a couple spotted nearby who never came forward as witnesses, and no body was found when the lake was dredged - to give Jodie cause to nurture a vestige of hope. So when, en route to a work pitch that could make or break her business, she spots a teenager with Tom’s curly hair and distinctive under-eye scar, she drops everything to follow him.

Jodie (Jill Halfpenny) becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth about her missing son
Unstoppable Film & Television / Photographer - Bernard Walsh

Neither the police nor her ex, it seems, are willing to give credence to her theory that her son is still alive; their guarded cynicism is entirely understandable (jumping onto a school bus to observe a child at close range is definitely a bit of a red flag) but is couched in patronising platitudes of the ‘calm down, dear’ variety.

It’s clear that Jodie will have to take matters into her own hands if she wants to uncover the truth, so she blags her way into a teaching job at maybe-Tom’s posh school (the safeguarding process is even less stringent than in School of Rock) and sets about ingratiating herself with his dad Mark (Rupert Penry-Jones), who lives in a Grand Designs mega-mansion and seems appropriately cagey about the finer points of his son’s early life.

Mark (Rupert Penry-Jones) seems cagey about his son’s early life
Unstoppable Film & Television / Photographer - Bernard Walsh

On first glance, there isn’t a huge amount to differentiate this from all the other shows jostling for space in the overcrowded domestic noir stable. The trappings of a prestige psychological thriller are present and correct: everyone’s closets are bursting with skeletons, no one is less than 60 per cent dodgy at any one time and half-drunk glasses of red wine tell us that female characters are complicated. But while these murky waters may have been explored before, The Drowning certainly bodes well for Channel 5’s drama output, which has been on the up for the past few years since the broadcaster decided to channel some of the money saved from axing Big Brother into scripted shows.

A well-paced, twist-laden script from series creators Luke Watson and Francesca Brill (Tim Dynevor, dad of Bridgerton star Phoebe and husband of Corrie icon Sally has worked on later episodes) and a strong performance from Halfpenny, who is always convincing even when Jodie’s single-minded pursuit of her son stretches our credulity, make The Drowning a gripping watch from the start.

With questions arising at every ad break, it’s a relief to learn that we won’t have long to wait for answers, with episodes playing out over consecutive nights. What happened to Mark’s wife? And is Jodie losing it? Though the story’s building blocks are familiar, they’ve been handled deftly enough that it’s hard to predict which way things will go.

The Drowning is on Channel 5 at 9pm, February 1 - 4.

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