Somewhere Boy: a gripping ‘fairy tale for our times’

My “strong advice”, if you’re watching Somewhere Boy, is to “give it a chance”, said Rachel Cooke in The New Statesman. To get hooked on Channel 4’s “ambitious” new drama, you’ll need a couple of episodes at least; but it’s worth sticking with.

Lewis Gribben stars as Danny, an 18-year-old who has been kept prisoner in a remote house in the English countryside by his widowed father Steve (Rory Keenan), “his only entertainments indoor golf and old black and white movies”.

His father has told him that the world outside is teeming with monsters; but when Steve dies, Danny is taken in by his aunt, and has to start adapting to the world. It’s “a fairy tale for our times”, part Brothers Grimm and part Dennis Potter. The script is “subtle and clever”, the acting excellent.

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This “quietly brilliant” show restored my faith in our ability to make decent television, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times. It’s not perfect: “there are a number of improbabilities, and some viewers may find it slow”. But it takes a fascinating story and spins “a web of modest magic”. It’s “perfectly cast”, too: for once, it hasn’t been built around “some sensational big name”, and the actors just “disappear into the roles”.

With episodes running to just 20 minutes, and a “jaunty, almost retro style”, Somewhere Boy is a refreshingly un-traumatic take on the “hackneyed domestic confinement genre”, as seen in Room or Stockholm, Pennsylvania, said Nick Hilton in The Independent. It is, in fact, “a charming paean to the indomitable human spirit”.