Hidden: episode one

A fast car. A carafe of wine. An old man staring through a window. Some guns. A French woman buying a baguette. Blood. A telescope. A remote voice coldly reading some numbers. And with that we're off. This is Hidden, BBC1's new conspiracy drama. And it's a drama with a capital D. And a capital R. And a capital … oh, look, you get the idea. But what do all these disconnected images mean? Anyone?

Philip Glenister shrugs off the lovably roguish ghost of Gene Hunt by playing Harry Venn, who is basically Gene Hunt but southern and a solicitor, so it's different. The first we see of Venn, he's dumping a hysterical girlfriend who still tries to sleep with him. Then he's smoking pot in bed with his ex-wife. Then he's snorting coke at work. Then his son gets arrested for stealing a car. Character-wise – and admittedly this isn't a reference I expect most of you to understand – he's a bit like a parody of everyone in Get Carter, and a bit like one of my uncles.

Venn is contacted by Gina Hawkes, a mysterious woman claiming to be a lawyer who, for mysterious reasons that she refuses to divulge, wants him to talk to a man who knows something about a man who saw a man on a Tube. But the man on the Tube was killed 25 years ago. Could this mean that Venn's brother – who knew the man on the Tube and was also killed – isn't really dead? And why has Venn suddenly become the target of several assassination attempts? He decides to get to the bottom of this the only way he knows how. With a heady combination of leaden flirting, repeating everybody's name far too often and having long, sepia-toned flashbacks. Speaking of which...

Previously On Hidden

Harry Venn hasn't always been a solicitor. He's got a dirty past, as hinted at in a series of flashbacks. From the look of things, he was hired as the driver for some sort of dodgy job that went bad, resulting in dead policemen and a brother bleeding to death in the back of a car. Whether or not these flashbacks are genuine is anyone's guess. They might not even be flashbacks. They might just be part of an extended provincial am-dram performance of Reservoir Dogs. They certainly look that way. However, they also hint at bent coppers and broken friendships, of which we'll no doubt discover more next week.

Meanwhile, in Westminster...

While all of this geezerish nonsense is playing out, there's also intrigue afoot in Westminster. There are riots, there are talks of coalitions, there are politicians with suspect finances. It couldn't be any more self-consciously current if someone interrupted a scene by barging in and blurting out something about the EU bailout. Meanwhile there's Anne Chancellor, done up like Kate Copstick and fulfilling her Disappointingly Slight Roles In BBC Dramas quota by muttering darkly about putting someone in a "political grave". Where does all of this sit with Harry Venn and his sub-Dyer posturing? One thing's for sure – whatever Hidden turns out to be about, this thing goes all the way to the top. Probably. It might not.

Next week

Surveying Venn's exploded office, a policeman says "Based on 30 years as a copper, I'd say someone's trying to kill you". Well, duh. Gina gets chased around by some men in balaclavas. David Suchet actually starts doing something. Suspiciously, too. I wouldn't trust him if I were you.

Notes and observations

Adam Boulton? Kirsty Wark? Hidden seems to have a direct line to some of the country's leading political pundits. Who can we expect to see next week? Paxman? Neil? Dineage?

The files that Venn found in Gina's hotel room were named Moscati (possibly named after Giuseppe Moscati, the Italian biochemist who was canonised in 1987) and Braddick (possibly named after Oliver Braddick, a leading developmental psychologist). This had better mean something, or else I've just wasted four precious minutes of my life on Wikipedia.

In the last quarter of this episode, Harry Venn gets punched in the face, almost stabbed with a poisoned syringe and watches as his office gets blown up. It it all wasn't so urgent and serious, Hidden would make a perfectly serviceable Tom and Jerry cartoon.