David Tennant’s mild Anglican priest hides a USB stick for his dodgy verger, setting off a chain that drags in Stanley Tucci’s sardonic wife-killer on Arizona death row and Dolly Wells’s unlucky tutor, locked in the vicar’s cellar. Steven Moffat’s four-part thriller, directed by Paul McGuigan, stitches these strands together with clockwork coincidences and gallows humour, the action ricocheting between a Surrey commuter town, a desert prison and a suburban basement. The vicar’s teenage son, a private maths pupil and a pushy crime podcaster complete the human fuse; once the stick’s contents surface, every escape route tightens.
Moffat keeps exposition brisk: Grieff dispenses murder consultancy from his cell while counting down to execution, Janice teaches factorials through a steel door, and Harry’s clerical collar frays under blackmail. The series aired on BBC One over four consecutive nights in September 2022, then dropped on Netflix for US viewers on Halloween, its 60-minute episodes designed for binge momentum rather than weekly speculation. Farnham’s parish church, Godalming station and a Fleet service-station café serve as the postcard England backdrop; the prison interiors were built at Shepperton.
Critical reception split between admiration for the gleeful contrivance and eye-rolling at the final-act sleight-of-hand, yet Tennant’s sweaty meltdown and Tucci’s dry asides earned uniform praise. No second run was commissioned; the miniseries ends on a decisive period, not a comma.
Production Details
BBC One / 1 Season / 4 Episodes / 2022
Created by: Steven Moffat
Showrunner(s): Ben Irving, Sue Vertue, Chris Sussman
Writer(s): Steven Moffat
Producer(s): Alex Mercer
Cinematography: Tony Slater Ling
Main Cast
David Tennant as Harry Watling
Stanley Tucci as Jefferson Grieff
Dolly Wells as Janice Fife
Lydia West as Beth Davenport
Lyndsey Marshal as Mary Watling
Louis Oliver as Ben Watling
Atkins Estimond as Dillon Kempton
Dylan Baker as Warden Casey
Eke Chukwu as Keith
Kate Dickie as Morag
Mark Quartley as Edgar
Tilly Vosburgh as Hilda
