Trigger Point review: You can't help admire this bomb squad drama's 'try hard' enthusiasm, but it's tough going at times
Among my sons' favourite expressions is one they use to dismiss anyone they feel is a little too enthusiastic, a little to eager to get on and do well. “Oh, he’s just a try hard,” they say.
Which could just as easily apply to ITV's bomb squad drama Trigger Point (ITV, Sun/Mon, 9pm) as it could to a bookworm Year 10.
Now in it's third series – so it must be doing something right – it really does put in 110 per cent to make every scene as thrilling, tense and nerve-shredding as possible.
Even when lead bomb squadder Lana 'Wash' Washington (Vicky McClure) is chatting about redundancy pay-outs with her parents, it ups the stakes by suggesting it's not for her parents to survive on – cue strained faces and clenched fists all round.
And it only gets worse when Lana and her team are dealing with actual bombs rather than metaphorical ones.
This new series saw the squad called out to a black cab left abandoned on waste ground. So far, so cut the red wire easy, until a haggard gentleman in a scruffy anorak pops up from the back seat like the worst kind of jack-in-a-box and Lana realises a chemical weapon is involved.
Abbreviations fly about like alphabet confetti – PIRs, ECMs, and one point there is even a call to “confirm possible IED to HQ”.
And talk of grey flags, bronze command and “using a clear channel to bypass out ECM”, all called out over crackly police radios, only serves to up the tension.
Add in viewing the scene through the scope of a police sniper's rifle and the music which thrums pulsatingly as the red counter counts down, and the show throws everything it can at the drama-ometer.
So much so that it verges on parody at times, as if it's taken all the tropes it could and mixed them up, under the impression that more is, well more.
And the leaden dialogue doesn't help. As well as all those letters, it rarely gets about the expositional or pedestrian - “Grasping tenuous supply chain links isn't the best way of tracking a criminal”, apparently.
This being a TV drama, the black cab bomb is the work of a serial operator, seemingly intent on avenging a wrong which happened years ago in a place called Coldmarsh.
So far, we haven't had the Whitehall men in grey suits desperate to cover it up – at any cost! - but they can't be far off.
However, we do have Jason Flemyng as the bomber; hunched, shuffling and dressed as one of the Fisherman's Friends shanty group, which you'd think would arouse attention in central London.
So a soup of cliches, impenetrable dialogue and unlikely performances – Trigger Point must be a dud, right?
Well, somehow, some way, it works.
Maybe it is the puppyish enthusiasm with which it tackles everything, maybe it's just that those 'which wire should I cut' situations are just inherently tense, but watching Trigger Point does get you on the edge of your seat.
And when McClure and Kerry Godliman, as forensic scientist Sonya, are in a scene together, it actually clicks, and you believe their relationship, as good friends and respected colleagues.
Sonya even gets some good lines – “I was educated by nuns. They're basically unionised witches”.
By the end of episode two, despite a rather limp cliffhanger, you can't help admiring Trigger Point's 'try hard' nature.
It does everything it can to please, and very nearly pulls it off.