TV Review: The Control Room is the perfect three-part telly snack for summer
Gabe works in the Control Room as an emergency call-handler for the ambulance service in Glasgow. Picture: BBC/Hartswood Films/Jamie Simpson.
The Control Room (BBC One and BBC iPlayer) isn’t perfect.
But it’s fast and twisty and set in Glasgow, where the accents make everyone sound 10% more angst ridden and desperate.
None more angst ridden and desperate than Gabriel, better known as Gabe. He works in the Control Room as an emergency call-handler for the ambulance service in Glasgow. We join him as he helps a couple deliver their child on the side of the motorway. The next call is a woman in tears, saying that she killed a man. She recognises his voice, calls him Gabo and hangs up. Talk about awkward.
His boss was in on the call, so now Gabe is helping police with their enquiries. Not only that, he’s helping the coppers track down a very close childhood friend, called Sam.
She is one of two people who ever called him Gabo, the other being his mother, who died when he was young. This is the key to the story working — Sam was there for Gab e when his mother died and he feels like he owes her one.
Believe that (I did) and it’s credible that he would agree to help her move the body when he tracks her down in an old den they had as kids.
Not so credible are the daft coincidences that drive the story along. How come Sam ends up getting through to an old friend on the emergency ambulance line? Just as Gabe is about to clear the police cordon with the body in the back, a drunk driver ploughs into him from nowhere.
These are forgivable for a couple of reasons.
The fast pace will sweep you along. (It helps that this is a three-parter, so there is none of the faffing-around flab you get in a ten or 12 part murder mystery. )
Also, t he narration is vague in a good way, so you’re not sure exactly what happened to them as childhood friends. This makes for a nice fog of mystery, that makes you want to see how it pans out.
We’re not sure about Gabe’s colleagues in the control room either. His boss is too friendly and a bit creepy, a 999s version of David Brent. Another colleague seems very keen on Gabe, but that could be because she’s keeping an eye on him for the police.
T he fog of mystery around Gabe and Sam’s friendship comes from a fire in a local Christmas Tree forest (yes, you read that correctly.) There are some dopey sequences with Gabe wandering through this forest, where he swaps back and forth between his adult and childhood self. I think it might mean that we’re formed by childhood traumas, but it could also just be that the director watched too many 1980s music videos.
That aside though, The Control Room is timely and not because there are forest fires all across Europe. It’s a neat, punchy thriller with decent characters and a couple of gotcha twists. Perfect little three-part telly snack for the middle of summer. Give it a watch.
