Jamie gets a punishing job on a cruise liner in a covert quest to find out what really happened to his missing sister, Pippa, but there’s a killer on board…

There’s a lot to enjoy in BBC Three’s new comedy thriller, Wreck. The premise – a Gen Z slasher whodunnit set in the confines of a luxury cruise liner – is a nicely fresh excuse to entrap a gaggle of troubled but good looking youth and let them either kill each other or strip down to their underwear. It’s a sort of Hollyoaks Ahoy with added knife ware.

Wreck’s greatest asset is Ryan Brown’s crackling dialogue which is razor sharp and laugh out loud funny. There’s a great opening gag predicated on a common auto-correct – the one when your phone doesn’t like you typing the f-word – and I particularly loved a quip describing a failed stalker as ‘The Talented Mr Whippy’. There is a lot more in that vein and it’s certainly enough to keep me interested.

The thriller/slasher stuff, however, is far less sharply honed. It’s neither particularly scary nor surprising. The lack of proper scares imbalances the show, and it’s not helped by a plasticky dayglo colour palette, the brash, bright look pulling Wreck in two directions, making it hard for the scares, when they come, to land.

Verdict: Wreck is fun, funny, and is kind of charming, but it would be even funnier if it took itself more seriously and focused on being properly frightening when it needs to be.  6/10

Martin Jameson