Well-meaning thriller with moments of implausibility: BBC1’s Crossfire reviewed

Crossfire was a three-part drama in more ways than one. Running every night from Tuesday to Thursday, it brought together a Die Hard-style thriller, an exploration of the complexities of family life (with particular reference to middle-aged womanhood) and a meditation on the nature of time. Odder still, it worked pretty well on the whole – though it was not without moments of frank implausibility.

Keeley Hawes played Jo, whose decision to book a holiday in the Canary Islands for her family and two others seemed a good idea at the time. Granted, her marriage wasn’t in top shape, what with her habit of falling for any man who paid her more attention than her husband did (making it not her fault really). Nonetheless, give or take one public row and a spot of sexting with her latest attention-payer, the holiday began uneventfully enough. Until, that is, some gunmen started shooting people around the hotel pool while she was on her balcony.

Given the strange parallel world in which TV drama takes place, all that we could be sure about at this stage was that the gunmen wouldn’t be Jihadis.