Anything Could Happen:After The Party.

"Anything could happen and it could be right now and the choice is yours to make it worthwhile" - Anything Could Happen, The Clean

When Phil MacKenzie (Peter Mullan) returns to Wellington, New Zealand after a five year absence his reappearance reignites a tinderbox that has been smouldering ever since he left, under a cloud, a full lustrum back. During a party, he was found by his wife Penny (Robyn Malcolm) in bed with a teenage boy. Phil has it that he was simply comforting a distressed drunken teenager. Penny believed he was sexually abusing him.

Despite the fact that there was no evidence of that whatsoever and that even the supposed 'victim', Ollie (Ian Blackburn), swears nothing inappropriate happened. After The Party (Channel 4, created by Malcolm with Dianne Taylor, written by Taylor with Sam Shore, Emily Perkins, and Martha Hardy-Ward, and directed by Peter Salmon) tells the story of how Penny's life unfolds as both friends, family, and authorities refuse to believe her account of events.

Viewers too - as the programme goes on - will start to doubt Penny's version of events - as well as her grip on reality. A once popular teacher, she storms out of a party in a huff and calls a fellow (female) guest a misogynist for having the audacity to suggest that sometimes women lie and make false accusations against men, she calls one of her pupils a "little cunt", and she generally makes an enemy of almost everyone she meets.

People tell her to get over it, to move on, and to let it go. As Phil appears to have done. He's planning to move in with their daughter Grace (Tara Canton) and her son Walt (Ziggy O'Reilly) and to all intents and purposes appears to have had his life ruined for no reason but is bouncing back with incredible equanimity. Is Penny having some kind of breakdown or has Phil done something very bad and we're being sold a puppy? Certainly the fact that Phil seems to be in possession of a young boy's underpants means we can't be 100% certain.

Is the rat that Penny finds in a rat trap symbolic? What about the ants and wasps that seem to be invading her house? Or the pornography she finds on one of her pupil's phones? To get to the bottom of it all we're taken on a journey that incorporates graffiti on a school lawn, a man being punched in the nuts, a kayak, an unwise kiss - and more, Robert Burns, Plato, fish guts, lots of basketball, and a very telling eulogy at a funeral.

The story, told partially in flashback, is powerful, emotional in places (one scene - one revelation - sent a chill up my back), and has lots of twists and turns including many you can't see coming. In fact, you always feel there is one last big twist to come but it's very hard to second guess what form it will take. It feels quite different to other dramas I've seen on similar subjects while at the same time not making too much of a song and dance about it.

Wellington looks amazing, there's a theme from Tune-Yards (as well as a nice blast of The Clean), and there are great supporting performances from Dean O'Gorman and Mia Blake as Penny's friends Simon and Bridget, Kieran Charnock as Ollie's brother Zack, Elz Carrad as Grace's cousin Tom, and Catherine Wilkin as Penny's mum Joy who is being moved into a care home.

Joy's story is one of several supplementary plotlines that don't really add much to the drama or ever really develop into anything meaningful. See also Penny volunteering as a nude model for a life drawing class and the (very) direct action she takes against a fishing boat that has drove her, like most things, into a paroxysm of rage. But that's a minor caveat in an otherwise addictive piece of television.

As Penny cycles round the hills of Wellington it seems to us she has no self-awareness whatsoever but at the same time we must bear in mind that this is a story and it is being told on television so things probably won't be exactly as they seem. Or will they? The fact that After The Party has you wondering about that right up until its thrilling denouement is testament to how compelling a drama it is. Quite literally, anything could happen.