Hunting Alice Bell: Simon Pegg Thriller Is a Hot Mess, Review Finds

Simon Pegg stars as Jason Nash, a murderous anaesthetist, in Hunting Alice Bell — a six-part conspiracy thriller that one review calls "a hot mess", albeit a watchable one. The drama was created by comedian David Baddiel and Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw.

What is the premise?

The series opens with a verdict. A woman has been found guilty of aiding and abetting Nash, her former boyfriend. An furious crowd bangs on the prison van taking her to 18 months behind bars. But the woman under the blanket is a decoy. The real Alice Bell is smuggled out through another exit. On release, she will be given a new identity.

Years later, Fran Da Silva (Alexandra Roach) sits down to breakfast with her husband and two teenage stepchildren. A brick crashes through the window. She is ostracised at work. The children come home with bloody noses and tales of abuse. At the insistence of social services, the family's infant daughter is sent to live with her grandmother.

Who is behind the campaign?

The online campaign against Da Silva is the work of an orchestrator styling himself True Crime Buster. The review describes him as "a transparent grifter, superpowered by attention" who argues for the public's right to know certain facts while proving precisely why the public cannot be trusted with them. He talks about "feminazis".

The reviewer notes the drama was apparently partly inspired by the case of Ian Huntley's former girlfriend Maxine Carr — particularly the women forced to deny being her. In the social media age, the thirst for anonymised rage is often the point, the review argues, and asks whether, in Orwellian terms, there is a modern Room 101 reserved for women implicated in awful crimes.

Where does it go wrong?

Ralf Little plays dodgy cop Graham Hunter. The review finds the police's role ambiguous and jarring: the family do not call them until masked vigilantes wielding clubs surround their home. The critic also identifies a structural problem — if the show's philosophical heart lies in exploring how groundless conspiracy theories take hold, why introduce another, arguably more far-fetched one? That plotline "feels like a category error; something that belongs in a different drama, with less serious intentions".

What works?

The review's verdict is blunt: the series "often feels like a mess". But it concedes: "if it's a mess, it at least has the good grace to be a hot one. It's punchy and compelling in its implausible way."

Fran discovers she is not the only woman accused of being Alice Bell. A support group forms, opening its first meeting with members intoning, one by one, "I am not Alice Bell". They become a cause celebre, invited to conferences and making media appearances. But not everyone in the group may be telling the truth. The hunt risks becoming a high-stakes, real-life version of The Traitors.

The critic faults the writing's unsubtlety — nods to the manosphere, "incel" culture and compulsive self-documentation are "a little too on the nose" — and compares its DNA to another Channel 4 drama, Tip Toe, while noting it lacks Russell T Davies's surefootedness with dialogue and characterisation. It cannot decide whether it is a study in modern manners, a whodunnit or a social satire, and tries to be all three at once.

Does it stick the landing?

Yes, according to the review. The series is strongest once it settles into being "a twisty thriller", and it ends cleverly, using viewers' likely confirmation bias against them. Whether Alice Bell is found is beside the point, the critic writes: what we find is a lynch mob culture in which "plenty of us are only a few clicks away from banging on the side of a police van ourselves".