Hi Mum. It’s ah – well, it’s me, you see. You’ll probably have already watched Crossfire (Tuesday, 9pm, BBC One) before you get this, but – heh. Well, half the show is just people leaving voicemails. So I guess we’re here. Yeah, do call me back if you get a sec, there is – I mean there are gunshots in the background, so …
Hi Mum, me again, I’m in a car park that’s blue and have been here for ages with absolutely nothing happening so thought I’d leave you a voicemail just in case you didn’t get the last one. Ah so: Keeley Hawes is here and she’s an ex-copper and we’re all on holiday and some lads are shooting up the hotel. I’m just going to lower my voice to a whisper for a minute, instead of hanging up and holding my breath in silence. Only I heard a small noise in the corridor by the locked door I’m hiding behind. And that could be a gunman coming to kill me. So I’ll probably just end this one here. Of course, the sensible choice would have been to stop talking to you many, many, many seconds ago.
Hi Mum. Me again. False alarm: it was just an underwhelming thriller scene. I tussled with the gunman but neither of us died. In a slightly different corridor now. What else, what else? Oh, right: bit of an awkward dinner last night. There’s a few of us on holiday is the thing. A lot of married couples and their kids. But I haven’t really got to know any of their names or back stories because that information hasn’t been presented to me. Yeah, it’s actually quite hard to care about each individual person as they, well, escape or do not escape the gunmen, I suppose. Three episodes of this, all on consecutive nights. Anyway will call back in a …
Mum. Mummy. Mumarino. Sorry, the last 10 minutes was just dialogue-free footage of people walking around corridors, occasionally sobbing or thinking they’ve seen something or very, very slowly opening a door. The hotel terror situation is still ongoing but nothing’s really happened with it. Will keep you just about invested.
Hey Mum, me again. Your only child in a live-fire situation. So anyway was just thinking, actually: as well as the voicemails and the people running around pretty much the same corridor again and again, there are occasionally – and always at the absolute most annoying time – quite a lot of flashback scenes, so I should …
Wow it’s New Year’s Eve. We are all here, look. All of us who are on holiday. Except now we’re here, on New Year’s Eve. There’s Guy’s Wife No 1 over there. Guy’s Wife No 2 dancing with her. All the Guys – No 1, No 2 and Naughty Little No 3 – are over there. Keeley Hawes is dancing and dancing. But what’s this: she’s … She’s sending a text now? Wow. Hope this scene doesn’t get played out, slowly and frustratingly, over the course of three hours spread agonisingly across three days.
Hey Mum, running out of battery a smidge so will keep it brief. Not much else to tell you, actually: it is weird, though, that every autumn is heralded by the BBC running a thriller over consecutive nights starring an actor who ascended in the early aughts, went quiet for just long enough for you to appreciate her comeback, then zings in with something where she’s either a copper or an ex-copper or some other high-pressure job that involves the whole thing opening with a scene where her body floats – serenely? Or after an accident? – in slow-moving blue water. Yeah I’m thinking about Vigil again. Wonder what they are cooking up for us next year. I’m going to take a stab at it: Sarah Parish is … a former bike officer who … takes her children on a Welsh holiday that … all very slowly goes wrong. Would you watch that? She can’t get signal on Snowdon so the voicemails would be kept to a very tight minimum.
Me again. Yeah, hard to know how to end things once you’ve held someone’s attention for ages without really knowing what you’re doing with it, isn’t it? Um: I’ve just realised that actually I could have just texted quite a lot of this. You live and you learn. Or, well – mmm. In my particular case maybe not. There’s no way a character as annoying as I am is making it to the end of this. Roof sniper, I’m thinking. Just when I’ve made it to the escape vehicle and turn back to wave my thanks to Keeley Hawes for being heroic. That’s how I would imagine I’ll get shot to death in this one. Well, ah. Seeya.
