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The Tower is Portland Tower, a residential building at which has been declared a critical incident.
The opening episode is surprisingly gory upfront, because veteran cop Hadley Matthews (Nick Holder), and a 15-year-old girl called Farah have fallen to their deaths from the top of the tower, and they’re on display in broad daylight. Surely in reality, they would put a marquee over them? Or at least a barrier to hide it from the public who can see everything and have mobile phones with cameras on(!)
At the top of the building is rookie PC Lizzie Adama (Tahirah Sharif), plus 5-year-old Ben (Rex Parry), but what happened?
The official line is that Farah grabbed the young boy from his home, took him up to the top, two cops went up to talk them down, and we’ve already seen the outcome. But is that the truth?
DS Sarah Collins (Gemma Whelan – Inside No.9: Wuthering Heist) is from the Directorate of Special Investigations, and she’s in charge of finding out what happened. However, she gets short shrift from other cops, listening to 999 calls reporting this only tells part of the story, and now Lizzie’s disappeared, but where’s she gone? Has she got something to hide? And why does Sarah’s weasely superior, DCI Tim Bailie (Karl Davies), want everything wrapped up quickly? Ooh, I don’t like him.
So, there’s many questions to be answered, and this is difficult to describe without giving details that I don’t want to divulge because spoilers.
Another question is – why is the investigation department in such a state of disarray with torn wallpaper?!
There’s flashbacks to show what happened before the incident, but also, a daft moment late on where credibility is stretched in how one individual carries out their work, as if they think they’re Jack Bauer from ‘24‘, rallying against the bigwigs. So, this is rather cliched at times when it doesn’t need to be. You’ll know what it is when you see it, but whether that was part of the original novel, I don’t know.
At the time of broadcast of the first episode, I do have access to the second, but while I will see how the drama plays out until the end, I’ll watch them as they’re broadcast because the preview doesn’t have subtitles, and quite a bit of the dialogue is either rushed or mumbled – which is fairly standard, these days. Why can’t they speak clearly?
UPDATE Episode 2:
UPDATE Episode 3:
The Tower begins on ITV tonight at 9pm and runs over three consecutive nights. After broadcast, each episode will be on the ITV Hub. It can be pre-ordered on DVD, ahead of its release on December 13th.
Episode 1 Score: 5/10
Episode 2 Score: 5/10
Episode 3 Score: 5/10
Director: Jim Loach
Producer: Paul Testar
Creator/Screenplay: Patrick Harbinson
Novel: Kate London
Music: Nainita Desai
Cast:
DS Sarah Collins: Gemma Whelan
DI Kieran Shaw: Emmett J Scanlan
DC Steve Bradshaw: Jimmy Akingbola
PC Lizzie Adama: Tahirah Sharif
PC Hadley Matthews: Nick Holder
DC Jez Vine: Jim English
Carrie Stoddard: Sally Scott
Farah Mehenni: Lola Eslokari
Younes Mehenni: Nabil Elouahabi
Aliya Mehenni: Zmira Wicking
DCI Tim Bailie: Karl Davies
DC Alice Parker: Harriet Webb
Gary Marshall: Joe Macaulay
PC Arif Johar: Michael Karim
Fred Thompson: Robin Morrissey
Ben Stoddard: Rex Parry
DC: Vic Waghorn
Mary Shaw: Laurie Delaney
Armed Police Responder: Dave Simon
Passer by: Stuart D Latham
Custody Sergeant: Joe Macaulay
Pathologist: Mentyee Lai
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.