The Control Room review: BBC drama with Iain De Caestecker is tense and dynamic - but needs another episode

The Control Room follows Gabe Mavers (Iain De Caestecker), an emergency call handler. He answers the phone when people call 999: he offers immediate, in-the-moment assistance, guiding strangers through impromptu medical procedures and waiting with them until help arrives, the lone voice of comfort and wisdom in a crisis. It’s an intense but inevitably brief bond, with Gabe handling hundreds such calls a week, and each caller glad to get back to their life afterwards. Sometimes they remember him, but for the most part it’s a job with a certain anonymity to it.

Until, that is, someone recognises him on a call. “He’s dead, I’ve killed him,” sobs the caller, frantic. Gabe moves through his script, calm and measured, explaining the ambulance service might still be able to help – until the caller cuts him off again. “Gabo? Is that you?”

The Control Room reveals the true extent of Gabe’s relationship with caller Sam (Joanna Vanderham) slowly across its three episodes, though the call itself upends his life almost immediately. The police are quick to investigate, looking to find a potential murder suspect; his colleagues are cautious and guarded around him, suspicious about how much he really knows about a caller he claims not to recognise. As he tries to find answers of his own, Gabe starts taking risks and breaking laws, getting further and further away from where it all began started.

It’s an impressive showcase for Iain De Caestecker, who plays Gabe like a tensely coiled spring. De Caestecker has always been good at playing that kind of anxiety under pressure – the heavy breathing, the sweaty panic, the scream of frustration – but this feels like a refined, perfected version of what he’d already done so well on Agents of SHIELD. A lead role for De Caestecker is welcome (especially after impressing in supporting parts in last year’s Roadkill and Us) and it feels like The Control Room manages to make effective use of him and his skills as an actor.

When the time comes for De Caestecker to share screentime with Joanna Vanderham, the pair have strong chemistry together, each convincing as two halves of a strained and complex relationship stretching far into the past. At times, the script can prove frustratingly opaque on a character level: much of the emotional thrust of The Control Room is leaning on a relationship it doesn’t want to wholly reveal, built out of details not yet divulged, which gives it a certain withholding quality. Sometimes, those central questions – “who is Sam to Gabe, and why is he willing to take so many risks for her, even after all this time?” – are hard to answer, but De Caestecker and Vanderham nonetheless hold things together well.

For the most part, The Control Room is a reasonably well-constructed thriller. For all that it can be emotionally opaque, that same quality lends it a nice sort of elusiveness structurally – it’s better than most comparable dramas at keeping the viewer guessing, managing to build its twists and turns neatly. (Chloe springs to mind as a recent BBC thriller that didn’t quite manage to reach the same heights as The Control Room.) It even, in what is quite a rare quality, manages to make sense retroactively, with early ‘plot holes’ later emerging as key turning points.

It’s not perfect: the third and final episode strains against itself, with the arc of the thriller becoming more than a touch convoluted and threatening to unspool. Director Amy Neill (responsible for a number of nice, evocative closeups throughout) more or less holds things together, but there’s a nagging sense perhaps that writer Nick Leather planned for four episodes before only receiving a commission for three. There’s a bit of a breakneck quality to that last episode, equal parts an escalation as it builds towards a climax and a messiness around the edges as it reaches its conclusion.

Ultimately, though, The Control Room works. It’s a taut, propulsive thriller, and it’s a great canvas for Iain De Caestecker as a lead actor. In short, there’s a lot to like here – even if, just maybe, you might like it more if there was a little more of it.

The Control Room begins on BBC One at 9pm on Sunday 18 July, with new episodes airing each night. I’ve seen all three episodes before writing this review. You can read more of our TV reviews right here.