LAST ONE STANDING (TRUELOVE)

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Channel 4 drama at its very best is edgy.

Its finest miniseries are not afraid to tackle big issues or whip up controversy.

Think Alan Bleasdale's 'GBH,' Simon Moore's 'Traffik,' Alan Plater and Chris Mullin's 'A Very British Coup,' Jack Thorne's 'National Treasure,' Dominic Savage's 'I Am..' dramas,  Shane Meadows' 'The Virtues' or Russell T Davies' 'It's A Sin.'

These have tackled everything from the international drug trade to homophobia and AIDS, from sexual abuse to manipulation of the left wing.

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2024 has begun with another Channel 4, drama taking on a huge issue - assisted dying and the treatment of senior citizens.

'Truelove' is the creation of 'End of the F**king World' writer Charlie Lovell and Iain Wetherby and it raises uncomfortable questions.

The six part miniseries begins with five friends at a funeral in a remote country church for another friend, Dennis. 

In the late autumn of their lives, the group includes Lindsay Duncan's former Assistant Chief Constable Phil, Clarke Peters' ex soldier Ken, married couple Peter Egan's doctor David and Sue Johnston's Marion and her brother, Karl Johnson's Tom.

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After the funeral, the group retire to a wake at a local pub The Knot where they embark on a boozy session and moan about the slow decline that old age brings.

As they get drunk, Tom tells them the tragic story of a suicide pact of two lovers that inspired the full name of the pub, The Truelovers' Knot.

He goads them into drunkenly swearing a pact to euthanize a member of their group facing a traumatic death if they use the codename 'Truelove'.

The group retire to their separate bedrooms the worse for wear after their session, with it emerging that Phil and Ken are former sweethearts who married other people.

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The next day the group go back to their normal lives, with Phil returning to her husband Phil Davis' Nigel and Ken returning to the modest flat where he lives with his dog.

Estranged from his ex wife and grown up son, he carves figurines in his spare time from wood and walks the dog.

Eight months later, Ken and Phil both receive a postcard with the message 'Truelove' on it from Tom and a rendezvous.

Turning up at the agreed time, they're told by Tom he has liver and pancreatic cancer or "the full English" as he glibly describes it.

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Asking them to help him die before the disease claims him, he's disappointed and angry when Phil and Ken refuse, claiming the drunken 'Truelove' pact was not serious.

Tom subsequently attempts to take matters into his own hands by hanging himself but the rope snaps and he is hospitalised.

Visiting him, Ken and Phil are talked into assisting his death and they arrange to meet him at sea to help him fake a drowning.

Taking part in what they believe is a dress rehearsal, Tom greets them with a bottle of champagne on his boat and then springs a surprise, flooding the vessel and urging them to take his life there and then by asphyxiation.

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Ken and Phil reluctantly oblige and after leaving him dead on the sinking boat, return to shore on a dinghy Tom has arranged for them to travel in.

They buy phones to remain in contact about any police investigation that might ensue.

Phil's confidence that they have covered their tracks is rewarded when the police and coroner treat Tom's death as a tragic accident.

One police officer called to the scene, Kiran Sonia Sawar's Ayesha is not so sure, though, it's as straightforward as it seems.

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She starts to dig around video footage of a local boat club when the stolen dinghy is found ashore.

Nigel, meanwhile, discovers Phil's phone hidden in a drawer as Ken tries to ring her and suspects she is having a affair with the ex soldier.

After confronting her about it, the couple go to marriage counselling, while Ken, at his sister Sandra James-Young's Jean's behest, reaches out to his estranged son, Ben Bailey Smith's Samuel ahead of his granddaughter's christening.

Phil and Ken meet up with David and Marion to scatter her brother's ashes and are shocked when the couple reveal they know that both of them were involved in Tom's death.

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Revealing Marion has dementia, they ask Phil and Ken to undertake a second act of 'Truelove' but will the duo have the stomach to go through that again?

And if they do, what will be the implications for those left behind after Marion's death?

In normal circumstances the TV drama everyone in Britain should have been talking about at the start of this year would have been 'Truelove'.

However January 2024 has seen another TV drama dominate the airwaves, dominating debate on news channels and talk radio shows.

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ITV's 'Mr Bates versus The Post Office' has pretty much stolen its thunder, deservedly drawing loads of plaudits for forcing the British Government to address the unjust treatment of postmasters accused of fraud or theft thanks to a dodgy Fujitsu computer system for the Post Office.

Nevertheless, Lovell and Wetherby's drama should not be overlooked, raising troubling and important questions about attitudes to ageing and assisted dying which is illegal in the UK.

Tackling such a sensitive subject, the writers are careful to allow audiences to make up their own minds on whether Ken and Phil are murderers or simply acting out of compassion.

Some viewers may struggle to buy into a central concept of friends agreeing to bump each other off when faced with the unpalatable and often undignified decline towards death.

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But if you can get over that challenge to its credibility, you will find a show that is compellingly written and brilliantly acted.

Taking on such a heavy subject, Lovell and Wetherby still manage to unearth nuggets of black humour in an otherwise dark drama.

Tom amuses as he wryly observes in hospital he has a do not resuscitate order while also being on suicide watch.

Pressed by Nigel and her daughter, Fiona Button's Kate into giving up their family home and downsizing, Phil neatly sums up ageing as "Everybody knows how it goes - bungalow, hospice, crematorium."

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This sentiment is later echoed by David when Ken and Phil visit him and Marion in their modest bungalow to discuss their 'Truelove' plan: "When you start moving into smaller and smaller boxes, soon they'll be measuring you up for a wooden overcoat".

And it is this withering cynicism that really makes 'Truelove' stand out from other euthanasia dramas - avoiding easy sentimentality.

Directors Chloe Wicks and Carl Tibbetts understand the tone and quality of Lovell and Wetherby's scripts are such that you can let an accomplished, vastly experienced cast rip into them without ever losing their sense of discipline.

Duncan is superb as Phil, a tough as nails, shrewd ex-cop who ends up ducking and weaving as Nigel starts to wonder what she is doing and Ayeesha starts to ask questions about Truelove.

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Peters is excellent too as Ken whose unrequited love for Phil upended his marriage and his life and who now finds himself reluctantly drawn into a suicide pact of Tom's making that opens up old wounds.

Egan is superb as David, delivering his best ever dramatic performance on TV and really coming into his own in the later episodes.

Sue Johnston and Karl Johnson are perfectly cast as Marion and Tom - relying on buckets full of charm.

Phil Davis is terrific as Phil's twitchy and emotionally bruised husband Nigel, engaging our sympathies as his marriage crumbles and he delivers a wonderfully tragic scene of drunken rage.

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Sawar catches the viewers' eye top as the dogged and ambitious police officer Ayesha who is haunted by a previous mistake at work and is desperate to prove herself to colleagues who are wary of her investigative instincts.

James-Young, Bailey Smith and Button also turn in performances of note.

As 'Truelove' progresses, the show takes some delicious twists along the way which work if you are prepared to swallow the concept of friends agreeing to euthanize each other.

But that's the big if hanging over Lovell and Wetherby's miniseries.

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While their high wire act occasionally threatens to wobble, 'Truelove' has enough dramatic heft to reward those prepared to buy into its central premise.

It's a pity this thought provoking miniseries was released at this time under the shadow of 'Mr Bates versus The Post Office'.

If it had been scheduled later on the year, 'Truelove' might have really provoked a debate about an issue that raises real moral quandaries for many.

But it's a debate worth having.

('Truelove' was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK between January 3-18 2024, with all episodes available on the All 4 streaming service)