The Fear Channel 4. 10pm

Richie Cottan's new thriller.
The double spread advertisement in The Observer had Peter Mullan, who plays Richie Beckett, in a triangle with his two sons behind him, against a backdrop of a pier with Fear in red lights. It reads ‘the criminal mind is a fragile thing’. Well it is if you’ve got Alzheimer’s, or dementia or you’re just fragile with a criminal mind. Peter Mullan playing a gangster, whether on a horse or in the street, is none of these things. You know he’s going to have a maddy and when he does, like when a unicyclists leans against his shiny executive car, you know it’s for real. His boys understand this. This is no Graham Greene’s Brighton. This is a new shiny Brighton were gangsters wear suits and turn legit. Richy Beckett can afford to put up £250K as a good will gesture so the council can upgrade the pier. But there’s a new gang in town. The Albanians don’t mind piling bodies up like sandbags. They’ve cut a girl up in two and left the head and arm as a warning. So what’s new about this? I can’t remember, but it’s very good. I’ll be watching the second part shortly.