Love of an unhealthy kind in Bouquet of Barbed Wire

Those of us of a certain vintage remember Eddie Shoestring, the detective who became a sort of good looking English version of Columbo with his similarly bedraggled trench coat. Actor Trevor Eve, who played Shoestring, has aged well – but these days he’s pushing the boundaries well beyond his old detective days.

Eve is the star of Bouquet of Barbed Wire, the three-part ITV drama which concluded last night (the final episode is repeated on Sunday) where he plays a deeply disturbing character whose obsession with his only daughter goes far deeper than a father’s should.

The implied suggestion of incest hovers over this remake of a series that caused quite a stir when it was first aired all of 34 years ago – and if you’ve been keeping pace with this latest version you won’t wonder why.

Peter Manson – played by Eve – is a successful, debonair architect with the big house and car and thriving office; happily married on the outside to Cassie (Hermione Norris of Cold Feet and Spooks fame) and clearly adoring his free-spirited sixth form daughter Prue (Imogen Poots).

But Prue is growing up a little faster than Daddy knows and when she has an affair with her arrogant young English teacher, Gavin, she finds herself pregnant, opting out of college and living in a damp high rise flat.

Even when she returns from honeymoon with facial bruises, she won’t bow to the inevitable – but Gavin knows anyway that her father’s relationship with his lovely daughter goes way beyond the point of obsession.

Things quickly start spiralling out of control, with Peter paranoid that Gavin is out to get him and his marriage on the rocks since he's having an affair at work. And somehow this all has something to do with the mysterious Paula, whose name Gavin just happens to have tattooed on his wrist.

When you add up Peter’s affair with Sarah, his new colleague at the office, and Cassie’s increasingly unhealthy interest in her new son-in-law, you’re beginning to get a sense of how quickly things unravel – and the successful world of the middle-aged man comes tumbling down around him as this dark, psychological series dips a toe into the murky waters surrounding sexual obsession.

Imogen Poots steals the show as Prue, the unwitting victim of so much of the disaster that befalls her family; at first she seems in control of her young life, making bad choices through deliberate rebellion, not because she’s being manipulated.

But by the time it emerges that perhaps she’s not the architect of her decisions, you’re completely hooked – and Eve, in a role that’s a long, long way from Shoestring, reveals hidden depths that keep you glued to the finish.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.