Coldwater is simply dreadful

During his many years on The Walking Dead, Andrew Lincoln spent a fair amount of time fleeing shambling corpses. So he will have felt perfectly at home starring in ITV’s Coldwater – a braindead thriller about a man who is drawn into a deadly conspiracy with his creepy neighbour that lacks a pulse but aimlessly lurches ever forward.

In an interview to promote his return to the British small screen, Lincoln confessed he was “none the wiser” if Coldwater was a “a farce, comedy or thriller”. Welcome to the club, Andrew – at the end of the first episode, I am unsure if the Scotland-set series is pulling an elaborate joke. It can’t be this dreadful on purpose, surely? Is there a punchline I’m not getting?

It does start with a bang, though. Lincoln is John, a nervous dad whom we first meet playing in the park with his two kids, when an aggressive fellow father swaggers up to the swings. When violence breaks out, John’s response is to pick up one of his children – neglecting the second one – and run, Forrest Gump-style, towards the gate.

Lincoln huffs and puffs, and the script clearly calls for him to look as if he is having a breakdown as he pegs it. But his terror immediately veers into (presumably accidental) comedy. There are hints later in the episode of past anger management issues, which could potentially explain John’s extreme reaction. In that moment, though, it is like watching a clumsy re-enactment of Tom Cruise dashing across a rooftop in Mission Impossible.

The story then jumps forward several months. Reeling from the panic in the park, John and his family have relocated to the small Scottish town of Coldwater. But all is not well. His wife Fiona (Indira Varma) is sexually frustrated (I’m not being prurient – this is a major plot point) and John, alas, is too busy feeling sorry for himself. He is also struggling with a sense of emasculation, having become a house-husband while his spouse works on a book about her previous life running a glamorous London restaurant.

Then, Trainspotting’s Ewen Bremner pops up as John’s new next door neighbour Tommy, a creepy Bible studies teacher obsessed with serial killers. He is a little too keen on making John his new best friend, and Bremner seems stuck between portraying the character as a monster or a just bit of an oddball.

As his wife Rebecca, the usually excellent Eve Myles looks equally at sea – as she would portraying a vicar who reveals early on that she doesn’t believe in God. Tommy and Rebecca are a double act so grotesquely strange they feel like left-over characters from a dark early Noughties sketch comedy such as League of Gentlemen.

You have to feel, too, for Varma. A star of high-wattage hits such as Luther and Game of Thrones, she now finds herself marooned in an ITV drama that has all the spark of a battery recycling bin.

Anyway, while out on a run, John crosses paths with local ne’er-do-well Angus (Lorn Macdonald), who ambushes him. They tussle on the ground before John picks up a handy rock (there are always handy rocks in these shows) and bashes his attacker’s head in. In (yet another) panic, he rushes to Tommy, who promises to help his new neighbour take care of the situation.

Coldwater writer David Ireland has described the series as a love letter to folk horror movies such as The Wicker Man. But where that classic chiller was deceptively bright and chirpy on the surface – most of it takes place during daylight – and terrifying just underneath, Coldwater is the opposite. It takes the serious subjects of PTSD and anger management and twists them into grim parody.

Lincoln hasn’t looked so uncomfortable since he was cast as Keira Knightley’s “charming” stalker in Love, Actually. Zombies are one thing, but in Coldwater, he is confronted by a show that is moribund from the very start.

‘Coldwater’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on ITV1