The precarious world of internet dating has become dangerous as a serial killer is targeting singletons. Can Vicky find a suitable match and, more importantly, will she avoid the clutches of The Lonely Hearts Killer?

Spoilers

Having spent most of her life as sole carer for her now late mother, Vicky is finally free to meet Mr Right. She’s signed up with an online site that arranges brief zoom-like calls which give you a few minutes to chat to and appraise a potential match. The bulk of this episode is taken up with these calls, mostly of a humorous bent and mostly with dreadfully unsuitable matches. Throughout we’re privy to brief flash-forwards as Vicky welcomes an unseen date into her flat. Possibly not an entirely wise move on her part…

Claire Rushbrook (The Fades) as Vicky is front and centre throughout and is superb. She’s become a regular TV face and rightly so, she’s absolutely the highlight of this episode. Among her potential suitors we have writers Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, essentially making cameos this week, along with Matthew Horne (Gavin & Stacey) and Asim Chaudhry (People Just Do Nothing). In what seems to be something of a mix up we also have Frances Barber (Doctor Who’s Madame Kovarian in season 6).

These are entertaining performances all round and the direction by Jesse Quinones (Waterloo Road) is excellent – it’s quite the challenge to make someone talking at a computer monitor for half an hour interesting to look at. Unfortunately there’s a major problem with this episode which is that it’s clearly going to have a twist ending and one that is immediately obvious within minutes. This isn’t a series that always relies on such twists but it very often does and the foreshadowing sequences sadly point in such a direction – it simply can’t be as obvious as what we think we’re seeing.

Having said that, I still enjoyed it, especially as I’ve always been a fan of things like Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected with their usually blindingly obvious twists. In fact you can imagine Dahl coming up with a story much like this had he lived to see the internet take off. I’ve just come to expect something a little more sophisticated from this series.

Verdict: Well done and with something to say about the nature of loneliness, but compromised by its obvious resolution. 6/10

Andy Smith