The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret:Viewpoint.

"Everyone thinks their secrets are safe .... and they're really not" - DC Martin King

"Sometimes, it's the people closest to us we know the least" - DC Martin King

I'd jotted down those two quotes from Noel Clarke's character, DC Martin King, in ITV's Viewpoint before, about halfway through the screening of the five part series this week, the multiple allegations of groping, bullying, and sexual harassment were revealed by The Guardian (and which I will return to at the end of this piece) but they do seem to sum up both what happened in Viewpoint, a drama about fictional events, and what's happened, far more seriously, in the real life of those coming forward to paint a particularly vulgar picture of the enormously successful actor-producer Clarke.

Paling into insignificance against real life events, I had nevertheless invested several hours into Viewpoint (and was enjoying it) so decided to stay with it (switching over to ITV Hub after ITV made the historical decision of dropping the last episode from its terrestrial channel because of the allegations). More to support the director (Ashley Way), creators (Harry Bradbeer, Ed Whitmore, and Tom Farrelly), and other cast members than through any sense of loyalty to Clarke.

Who was passable, if far from exceptional, in his lead role of DC Martin King, an officer from Manchester's police surveillance unit who is called up to work alongside DC Stella Beckett (Bronagh Waugh) on the case of a missing primary school teacher Gemma Hillman (Amy Wren) and installs himself in a flat across the road from the one she shared with her boyfriend Greg Sullivan (Fehinti Balogun).

A flat owned by Zoe Sterling (Alexandra Roach) and one she shares with her daughter Caitlin (Kila Lord Cassidy). Zoe's in an on-off relationship with Caitlin's father Tim (Andrew Hawley), something of a man-child who uses occasional excuses of DJ gigs to go missing for lengthy periods of time.

Complications arrive, and ones that you imagine in real life would have put the kibosh on the entire operation before it even began, in the fact that Zoe is/was a friend and colleague of Gemma's. They're added to by complications in Zoe's own life. She's moved to Manchester from Llanelli (where my paternal grandfather came from - which warmed me to ger) for the party life and it seems, even with child, the party has continued for her.

Often alone. Zoe likes a drink and she likes a smoke and she's also not averse to dabbling in her own bit of amateur sleuthing. When it looks as if romantic/sexual impulses may bring Zoe and Martin together, it is obvious, not least to Stella, that further trouble is waiting down the road.

Initially, the prime suspect in Gemma's disappearance is boyfriend Greg. He's jealous, quick-tempered, and it's revealed that he would ring Gemma, on average, thirty-five times a day. The suspicious behaviour observed by Martin and others hardly helps his case but then he's not the only one acting as if they have a secret to hide.

There's Gemma's boss, Dominic (Phill Langhorne), who nursed an unrequited crush on Gemma and had repeatedly asked her out on dates, there's former detective Donald Vernon (Ian Puleston-Davies) who is seen hanging around outside Gemma and Greg's apartment, there's an eccentric neighbour called Janice (Karen Henthorn), and there's Gemma and Greg's neighbours Carl (Dominic Allburn) and Kate Tuckman (Catherine Tyldesley) who seem to own half the block and often have visits from Carl's friend Pavel (Hubert Hanowicz) that get quite heated.

It is to Viewpoint's makers' credit that all of these, at first, seemingly disparate strands of the story are weaved tightly together to create a tense, interesting, and, at times, chilling if somewhat contrived thriller in which, until the very end, you're uncertain what will happen next - and in the case of the multiple copies of Iggy Pop's The Idiot LP you never will!

Against a recognisable Manchester of canals, trams, iron bridges, cobbled streets, stylish flats converted from former industrial buildings, and sleek shiny skyscrapers glistening in the sunlight (or, of course, rain) we witness a social group unravel in the wake of the tragedy of Gemma's disappearance and we see this reflected in Martin's own back story.

A less successful element of Viewpoint is the secondary story of Martin's redemption. He's split from his girlfriend, and mother of his child, Sarah (Carlyss Peer) and he carries guilt from an incident during his time in CID in which his former colleague DC Hayley Jones (Shannon Murray) suffered life threatening injuries resulting in her now being a wheelchair user.

You can't help thinking of Hitchcock's Rear Window but as Martin liaises with his team, bosses DI Liam Cox (Phil Davis), DCI Jill Conroy (Sarah Niles), and colleague DC Roly Dalton (Marcus Garvey, really) you find yourself engrossed in a compelling drama that works, mainly, as a whodunnit but doubles up as a meditation on the nature of surveillance itself.

As people spy on each other using binoculars, cameras with telephoto lenses (so popular in lockdown with certain elements), CCTV, or even, perish the thought, their own actual human eyes we face an uncomfortable truth. If we pry into people's personal lives for long enough we are more than likely to find something we're uncomfortable with.

If it's personal, private, and no crime has been committed it's probably best to live and let live but if a crime has been committed then that's not the case and that's what Noel Clarke seems to have discovered this week. An, admittedly tame - possibly cut in light of the allegations, sex scene Clarke is involved in played out more uncomfortably than it would have done just one week earlier and when ITV decided to pull the final episode from their main schedule I did have thoughts of bailing out too.

I decided not to. Not just because, as mentioned earlier, I'd invested several hours in it already but because, in my mind, I was watching (and reviewing) the show and not the man. I thought about how the other cast members, writers, and crew must feel let down by Clarke and then I remembered that was as nothing compared to the TWENTY women who have come forward to speak of the damage he has done to them, their confidence, and their careers and I remembered my priorities. Noel Clarke is, of course, innocent until proved guilty but I have a sneaking suspicion that the next time I see him on television he won't be solving crimes, he'll be being found guilty of them.