Graham Norton's novel is about a father with dementia (Douglas Henshall) whose wife has left him, and her name must never be mentioned again by his two kids, who grow up to be Jenny Walser and Lewis Cope. The father has a partner (Amy Nuttall) who discovers a grisly secret in his freezer, then involving her mum Denise Welch. Meanwhile the son's partner, who's a copper (Shane Zaza) is trying to manage a surrogate birth. Of course experienced watchers suspect that it's too obvious for the freezer-body to be the wife... it must be more complex than that. And as usual it then gets into "Is it him?" "Is it her?"
As usual with these things, it's riven with plot holes and implausibilities. For example, why didn't the wife just leave home for six months (rather than twenty years), then come back and say "It didn't work out with the brother-in-law"? And where goes she suddenly have enough money to buy the family home? And how come the copper knows all about the surrogate mother's boyfriend but his other half doesn't? And when the latter does reveal it, why didn't the copper say "Yeah, I know - it's all fine"? Maybe these things have only arisen because of the TV adaptation and weren't problems in Graham's novel.
It was quite entertaining and watchable though. Also with Kevin Whately, James Baxter (Walser's very married boyfriend), Nancy Sadsad.
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