Reviewing ITV's remake of A Bouquet of Barbed Wire

Trevor Eve plays Peter Manson, a middle-aged dad obsessed with his beautiful daughter, in ITV's remake of the psychological thriller first adapted for TV in the 1970s. Sixth-former Prue (Imogen Poots) reciprocates and the pair share giggly noodle lunches and soak up each other's affection. But with such a foreboding title as A Bouquet of Barbed Wire, you suspect that it's a bond about to be rocked. Possibly snapped.

The first nudge comes from Prue's good-looking, English teacher boyfriend, Gavin (Tom Riley), who hates her dad, but we don't know why. Neither does Peter, or if he does he's not letting on. Immediately, the puzzling-out part of your brain will try to unpick the plot-knot, but at this stage you won't come away with anything satisfying. Is Gavin simply unpleasant (yawn), a cruel loon who enjoys tormenting people for no reason (more interesting, but too pointless and meandering even for ITV) or is there some historical connection between Gavin and Prue's family spurring his behaviour? But when Peter announces that his daughter has been "despoiled by a sociopath", we deduce that there's a lot more to this noxious love-triangle.

As the episode opens, Peter is sketching in black pen. His strokes are hurried, taught, definitely frustrated, possibly angry. Next, he gets a phone call and we watch the grey-faced father speed down a tunnel. This, it turns out, is a tantalising taste of his future. The rest of our time will be spent discovering what went on, starting from four months ago, to deliver Peter to this point. Enter the daughter.

If you can see past her fleshy-lipped, dazzling loveliness, you'll notice just how a haunting and capable an actress young Poots is. In scenes shared by the 21-year-old and old hand Eve, she demands that we look only at her. And we obey. Poots instills her character with a quiet but gushing tragedy and it's impossible not to get swallowed up and fall a little bit in love with her.

But it's the dysfunctional, upper-middle-class interplay between family members, including mum Cassie (Hermione Norris), that will chill your cockles and ensure you make a date with Bouquet parts two and three. Bubbling underneath their banter and bickering are secrets and sadness. It's also a warped coming of age story for Prue. At first she seems in control of her young life, making bad choices through deliberate rebellion, not because she's being manipulated. When it emerges that perhaps she's not the architect of her decisions, you'll feel the ominous weight of what's been done, and what's to come.