The Cutprice Guignol

It truly has been a banner year for great, bad TV.

And I mean that, in case you haven’t guessed it yet, in an entirely positive sense. From the regal nonsense of The Perfect Couple to the delightful shite of Red Eye, you can hardly navigate the TV landscape without bumping in to something dreadful in just the way that scratches my trash TV itch.

Which brings me to Nightsleeper, the BBC’s entry into this year’s bullshit category. Starring Alexandra Roach (star of one of my all-time underrated British favourites, No Offense) and Joe Cole (eternally playing somewhere on the spectrum of “likeable arsehole” to “unlikeable arsehole”), Nightsleeper thunders cross-country on a runaway train hijacked by cyber-criminals (no, I will not be using the show’s “hackjacking” terminology, in service of clinging on to what remains of my self-respect).

And, oh God, a premise this stupid? This contrived? This easily summed-up by a Homer Simpson quote? I can’t say no, I just can’t. And what Nightsleeper delivers on is the pure commitment to the bit, the complete refusal to give in to the urge to tell some grander story surrounding these characters or this story – it’s a thriller set on a runaway train, and that’s what it remains, stoically, to the very end.

Amongst other things. A cheerful mish-mash of genres, Nightsleeper is an action-tech-thriller with a bit of slasher villainy, political satire, and the most heated inter-departmental work calls of the century. And now, I might be biased as a Scottish person, but the heavy skew towards a Scottish cast here really helps suspend my disbelief at some of the silliness – because, in truth, Scottish people just are that shithousey as a rule, and I fully believe, nay, expect that a woman from down the local Govanhill pool club would brandish an axe at the vaguest given opportunity.

Like all really great bad TV, Nightsleeper is about, for about 5% of the time, an excellent show. The excellent on-train ensemble is populated by a collection of really well-drawn characters, many of whom get strong arcs that unfold alongside the nonsense in a way that feels surprisingly organic; there’s an excellent sense of chemistry between this cast, and screenwriters Norah Grace and Nick Leather relied on brilliant character actors like James Cosmo and Leah MacRae to fill out these smaller moments with ease.

Nightsleeper is such a thundering pile of nonsense, barely dodging endless tech thriller cliches and often barrelling gleefully right into them with the subtlety train smashing through a major metropolitan station. But it’s one that is almost unbearably entertaining, a worthy addition to this year’s A-grade dreadful television, and I, for one, will be getting my ticket punched.

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(header image via Radio Times)