Embarrassingly addictive: Channel 4’s The Couple Next Door reviewed

For years now, lots of TV thrillers have begun with a terrified woman running through some woods. But not The Couple Next Door. Instead, the first episode opened with the sight of an isolated cabin and the sound of a gunshot – and only then did a terrified woman run through some woods.

Why the woman was terrified we haven’t yet learned, but we do know who she is – because in the next scene, her pre-terrified self and her partner were moving into their new house in a quiet, well-heeled Leeds cul-de-sac where every adult not mowing a lawn was washing a car. ‘Hello, suburbia,’ said her partner, perhaps unnecessarily.

Already, then, it was pretty clear that this six-part drama would be heroically unafraid of cliché. Some viewers might even have found themselves wondering when the couple – by now named as Evie and Pete – would meet their first suburban swingers.