3 out of 5

Directed by: Jamie Payne

There’s something sort of off about ‘The Driver’ right from its opening sequence.  David Morrissey (playing Vince McKee) is cruising the streets in a schmancy car when he’s pulled over by the police for, presumably, speeding.  He looks incredibly nervous.  After stopping, he waits for the police to approach… and then takes off, for an insane chase sequence during which he eventually ditches his tail.  He exits the car.  He smiles; he celebrates.  This was a thrill.  But then he goes back ’round and opens the trunk, staring at something inside.  And the scene ends. Morrissey doesn’t respond to whatever he’s looking at; his lack of response doesn’t seem like a purposeful understatement.  The scene just ends because it ends.  This high drama / emotional complacency is a good representation of the general failings of Driver to drum its low-rent noir into anything too pot-boiling.  The performances aren’t to blame, nor, really, is the scripting, which gives everyone a pretty meaty set of tools with which to construct their characters.  Direction is generally purposeful, and no single moment drags.  But co-creator / writer Danny Brocklehurst’s attempts to blend the crime genre with an intense family drama stall the former plot from getting intense enough and leave the latter plot without enough runtime to make it sing.

Vince is bored.  Something unspoken is wrong with his marriage: his wife sells products from home and then immediately puts on her headphones and goes running on a treadmill; Vince watches videos of his son online going off on some political rants, otherwise grumbling through his days as a taxi driver.  He gets a call one day from a mate who’s just gotten out of jail: Ian Hart.  The wife doesn’t approve of Ian, and we fully agree: he’s the type to get his mates into trouble.  …Only Vince is bored, and Ian invites him to a card game with some probable roughs led by probable local gangster Colm Meaney.  During the game, a job is floated: drive for me, asks Colm.  Ian knows this is a bad deal, but of course, the seed is planted.  It’s a classic noir setup, and it’s handled with true humanity.  One of the best aspects of the plot is that Vince isn’t a horrible husband.  He loses his temper and ends up piling up the lies as things go on, but he does want to fix things with his wife; his does want to reunite with his son.  We can feel all of these things, thanks very much to the actors and the capable script.

The second episode is where Vince buries himself deeper.  He makes some typical genre dumb decisions regarding his new employer (because he accepted the deal after all) and can only shovel shit so fast, especially because he’s oh-so-very human and not great at this.  …Which is where things stumble.  Morrissey makes Vince almost too normal; he’s not quite oblivious enough for us to just watch in distress as he makes poor decisions – we know he’s aware of what’s happening, and he just can’t seem to stammer out a response that even comes close to correct.  The third episode has some fun with this, but it’s something that needed to be slowly weeded in over a couple more episodes instead of just dropping us in it in the middle of the series.  Brocklehurst also confuses things by trying to bring the past with the missing son to a head.  The “lost” family member, shrouded in a bit of mystery, was a unique twist on a trope, and it could’ve been a more damning (damning is a good thing in noir) plot point to just leave it hovering in the ether somewheres.  But the ep is still well executed, and ends on a note that seems to significantly up the ante.

…Only to pull the high drama / emotional complacency bit in episode 3, almost through and through.  Things fall apart here, unfortunately, and it’s not an in-your-face disaster, but several subtle notes are hit which completely undermine the suspense.  The family drama picks up well, as a conversation between Vince and his wife comes to a head, interrupted by an arrest… but then a pat conclusion puts that to bed as well.

Overall, though, the series has enough unique points and a strong sense of purpose to keep you watching.  It absolutely doesn’t carry any emotional resonance through to the end, but it does feel like the project the creators intended it to be, and this confidence of vision manages to keep ‘The Driver’s head above water for most of the runtime.