Hope Not Hate:The Walk-In.

"We have to believe that people filled with hate can change" - Michael Collins, Hope not Hate

A neo-Nazi walks into a shop in Mold and knocks as Asian dentist, 24 year old Dr Sarandev Bhambra, out with a hammer before attempting to murder him with a machete while shouting "white power". The next year another killer shot and stabbed to death the 41 year old Labour MP, for Batley and Spen, Jo Cox in broad daylight. Shouting, as he does it, "Britain First, this is Britain".

Against a backdrop of Brexit, Breaking Point posters, Nigel Farage, Sieg Heils, and the burning of Israeli flags, The Walk-In (ITV Hub, directed by Paul AndrewWilliams, and written by Jeff Pope) is a dramatisation, based on real events, of how Hope not Hate, an anti-racism advocacy group, prevented the murder of another MP by extreme right ideologues.

It is brilliantly acted, wonderfully scripted, and it is powerful - from the very start. We see Michael Collins (Stephen Graham) in a university lecture theatre explaining to students how the extreme right attract followers. He knows because he was once a neo-Nazi skinhead himself.

Now he's working at Hope not Hate with Nick (Jason Flemyng) and Brenda (Shvorne Marks) campaigning against racism, fascism, Islamic extremism, and antisemitism. When he's approached by the police investigating the Mold killing, DS Donkor (Ryan McKen) and DC Buckley (Jodie Prenger) he becomes exasperated by their belief that the killer was a "lone wolf".

To Collins' mind, there are no such things as lone wolves. He believes the killer was a member of National Action, a proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist organisation and a very disciplined one too. National Action evolved from the BNP and use Islamist terrorist techniques for inspiration. They also receive funding from US neo-Nazi groups.

Collins' work has a huge effect on his own personal life. The regular death threats he receives, he has to check under the car every time he drives it in case of a bomb, means him and his family have to keep moving house. Which causes stresses with his wife, Alison (Leanne Best), and kids.

He is particularly loathed by National Action as he used to be like them. This leaves him haunted with flashbacks where we see a young Collins running with a violent gang of racist skinheads in the era of No Irish, No Black, No Dogs. There's a particularly brutal scene when the gang enter a library and begin headbutting a group of Asian women there.

In Bradford, Stanley (Kent Riley) and Robbie (Andrew Ellis) are fixing a cable outside the house of a Muslim family. They need to go inside the house to do the job properly but are refused access because they're unmarried and there are unmarried Muslim girls inside the house. Later, working in a warehouse, he sees Muslim workers being given extra breaks for prayers.

Inspired by his common-or-garden racist workmate, Robbie - who is single, directionless, unworldly, and unhappy with work, decides to do his own 'research'. On the Internet, of course. Soon he's attending a White Man March and soon enough he's approached by National Action.

Ben (Josef Davies), Garron (Ezra Watson), Matt (Bobby Schofield), and deputy leader Chris (Chris Coghill) run National Action, or NA, like a cult. When you join them you must renounce your other friends and, in Robbie's case, he definitely has to end his friendly chats about Man Utd with co-worker Asif (Irfan Shamji). For reasons I'm sure you can work out.

Worst of all the NA members is the youthful looking Jack Renshaw (Dean-Charles Chapman). A cold hearted fascist who believes Hitler was too merciful and that the Jews are keeping the cure for cancer to themselves and should be hunted down. Renshaw lives with his mum and appears to have some kind of dark secret that must never be exposed.

NA's idea to bring forward a 'coming war' start with the plan to execute the West Lancashire MP Rosie Cooper but Robbie's sister, Natalie (Molly McGlynn), becomes concerned when her brother starts to pepper his conversations with talk of 'vermin' and espousing conspiracy theories.

Collins eventually receives a phone call and is told of the plan to assassinate Cooper but can Hope not Hate help prevent it? To do so they will need a walk-in. Someone who is pretending to be part of NA but is in fact passing information to Hope not Hate. Who could that walk-in be and can they even be trusted?

Where The Walk-In works really well is that even though we know Cooper was never murdered we're never really sure who can be trusted and who can't be and we feel the fear of the perilous situations both that walk-in and Collins himself find themselves in. With scenes relating to the suicide bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in May 2017 (23 dead) and the terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge in London two months before that (6 dead) it's not a show that's shy in showing how Islamist terrorism and neo-Nazi terrorism inspire and feed off each other but one of its most powerful moments is perhaps how they handle the murder of Jo Cox, played here by Bryony Corrigan.

We hear the shout of Britain First and then the camera fades to black in respect. It's chilling but it's not exploitative and it should leave us with absolute certainty that hatred will, and has to, lose in the end. That hope is more powerful than hate.