TV review: Nasty turn in heavy-handed moral message

Emily (Sinead Michael) is the victim in a family tragedy. Photo / Supplied

Unwanted one surly adolescent male and whiny prepubescent girl, offspring of a pair of newly shacked-up and horribly amorous middle-aged lovebirds, giving love and relationships yet another whirl.

Yes, it might be starting to look like spring outside, there might be green shoots in the world economy but in the lounge the season of grim and cheerless drama continues in TV One's Sunday Theatre.

We've had kiddy-fiddling a few weeks back, last night's first instalment of two-parter, The Children (8.30), was one to strike fear and guilt into the hearts of the separated, with its heavy-handed message: divorce is a killer for children. This moral took a nasty, literal turn with the murder in the opening scenes of an 8-year-old girl, victim of a broken home and badly blended new family.

You'd be forgiven for thinking from the start, the neighbour's screams, the plods racing to the scene, that we were in for a good, gritty whodunit. But while the murder story broke out in occasional flash-forwards, mostly this was a turgid domestic drama. No sooner had the girl, Emily's body been discovered on the patio than we were back into a rather dull, explanatory set-up with mum's new squeeze moving in, along with his truculent 14-year-old son Jack "to start a new life".

The murder should be the most horrifying thing about this drama but in fact it's the ghastliness of watching the oldies moon all over each other, smooching and grabbing a quick afternoon shag that strikes true terror in the heart. No wonder the kids are acting out.

Kevin Whately plays the self-absorbed father; the actor, as comfy and rumpty as an old slipper, isn't a romantic lead for the squeamish. Geraldine Somerville is his new love Sue, as tense and upbeat as her distractingly perky, flicked-up hair.

Radiating out from this pair is a confusing circle of ex-es and their new add-ons which took about half the drama to sort out, perhaps because they are all the same in the selfish pursuit of personal fulfilment and downright hardhearted neglect of the kids.

This doesn't give the adult actors much to work on, even the wonderful Lesley Sharp playing Jack's bitter, boozing mum.

The children have more to get their teeth into. Freddie Boath is all hormones and resentment as Jack. And Sinead Michael is compelling as the angelic-looking Emily, whose behaviour is becoming increasingly manipulative.

As far as the whodunit goes, however, I'm not sure I care in a drama in which there's no one to like. And as a moral tragedy this is no more than skin deep. All children of selfish, insensitive adults are unlucky, whether their parents are married or divorced.