Appropriate Adult ITV 9pm.

An appropriate adult refers to an adult who acts in loco parentis for a child, or in this case an adult, Fred West, who claimed to have some degree of learning difficulties. Emily Watson plays Janet Loach, Fred West’s appropriate adult. The case initially being investigated is the killing of his daughter Heather, which in the police interviews he freely admits, but later retracts. Fred West played by the appropriately named Dominic West, quickly establishes Fred’s attempts to maintain the fiction that he is a family man that has somehow found his way to killing his daughter and that was it, more of less, an accident, until more bodies are discovered and more accidents disclosed.

Rose West (Monica Dolan) is shown as confrontational with the police and authorities in general. This bullying, foul-mouthed presence, is given free rein when she meets with Loach in the police station in which her and Fred are being held. Rose accuses her of being ‘a frightened little mouse’.

Emily Watson, of course, has got that kind of face. Many of the scenes are played out with string bows focussing on her face. In the first ad break she, of course, runs off to be sick. In the next one the dour detective asks ‘has Fred said anything to you privately?’ At this point she looks as if she is chewing a full packet of Wriggley’s.

There is an added complication, of course, a backstory in which her Loach's husband is maniac depressive, or in the more modern terminology, bipolar. Anyway, he’s bonkers enough to buy a new car, that is not a Mini Metro. One phone call and he’s in the local psychiatric hospital. Now that is hard to believe.