Monday, 1 September 2008, 9:00PM – 10:00PM

This provocative three-part drama is about step-families and our messy modern lives. It explores the upheaval and excitement of new relationships, and how the emotional turmoil can lead to the unthinkable happening.

Kevin Whately stars as Cameron, who is in a new relationship with Sue, played by Geraldine Somerville, after the bitter break up of his marriage to Anne, played by Lesley Sharp. Cameron has a troublesome teenage son who resents the upheaval in family life, and Sue has an eight-year-old daughter, Emily (Sinead Michael), who is equally unhappy with the new arrangements at home.

Ian Puleston-Davies plays Sue’s ex-husband Paul, who also has new partner, Natasha, played by Kate Ashfield. They are celebrating the birth of their daughter.

Eight-year-old Emily is found murdered on the patio of her home. Any one of the adults who care for her could have killed her, but which one?

Emily had got so much under the skin of the caring adults around her, all so frustrated in their continuing attempts to create a happy new home life, that one day, in a sunny garden, someone lost it, raised a hand and hit her, once, so hard her neck broke. When Cameron (Whately) and Emily’s mum Sue (Somerville) started a new family home six months previously, it would have been impossible to foresee such a tragedy. Perhaps the tension caused by Cameron’s teenage son Jack (Freddie Boath) moving in contributed, or just the clashing of the competing priorities of their private and professional lives and the needs and sensitivities of their ex-spouses. What we do know is that every relative is a suspect.

Throughout the story the action flashes back and forth between the murder scene and the events that build to Emily’s tragic death.

Lucy Gannon (Servants, Soldier, Soldier, Peak Practice, and Bramwell) says: “Every person who loves this little girl, lives with her, cares for her, could have killed her. I hope we’ll all have our own theory about who did it, and that the theories will be different.

“This is a challenging and provocative drama about what can happen when children become displaced from family life by the divorce of their parents.”