The Near Room

This Scottish thriller, developed by British Screen and written by Robert Murphy, is regrettably no advert for the future of small-budget, big-screen British product. Dunbar's a Glaswegian journo-turned-investigator whose search for a young girl (his daughter, unbeknownst to her) leads him into heavy-duty pressure, caught between hard-nosed editors, bent cops, prostitutes, paedophiles and power-hungry lawyers. 'The machinations of the secret state have been exposed,' says a character, but it's only a ruse. Hayman's stylised TV direction, the sountrack atmospherics, the over-use of red filters and circling overhead camera, and the formula performances detract from what could have been a topical noir drama.