Five Days
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| Five Days | |
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| Genre | Drama |
| Running time | 289 minutes[1] (approx 58 minutes per part) |
| Starring | Hugh Bonneville David Oyelowo Sarah Smart Edward Woodward |
| Music by | Magnus Fiennes |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Original channel | BBC One |
| Original run | 23 January 2007 – 1 February 2007 |
| No. of episodes | 5 |
| Official website | |
| IMDb profile | |
Five Days is a five-part television drama miniseries produced by the BBC in association with Home Box Office (HBO) and aired on BBC One from 23 January to 1 February 2007, and repeated on BBC Four from 9 April to 13 April 2007.
The series follows five non-consecutive days (days 1, 3, 28, 33 and 79) of a police investigation into the disappearance of a young mother and her two children. It was written by Gwyneth Hughes and directed by Otto Bathurst and Simon Curtis. Music for the series was composed by Magnus Fiennes [2].
Contents |
[edit] Plot
Leanne Wellings prepares to visit her Grandad who resides in a home. She takes her two young children Rosie and Ethan, calling up the stairs to her elder daughter, Tanya, to join them. Tanya makes an excuse; she doesn't want to go. Leanne shrugs and they leave. Leanne is rushing to collect a dog from the shelter before it closes. Then she drives to see her Grandad, new dog in tow, but stops at a layby to buy Grandad some flowers from a stall. A lorry draws up at the same time. The children lose sight of their mother as they sit in the car; Leanne does not return and the bewildered children start to walk away from the car. Leanne's husband, Matt, works at a local gym. It is here that several of the characters connect with each other: Press Officer Defne ignores loner Kyle as he tries to make a conversation.In another scene, we meet Barbara and John, Leanne's parents, Barbara is a bit of a firebrand, mild- mannered John makes jam. At the home, Vic is waiting impatiently for Leanne to arrive. He has a close relationship with Hazel, a carer at the home.
Slowly the family learn not only of Leanne's disappearance: the children are now missing too. Kyle seems to have picked them up in a white van. The police begin the investigation, but they themselves seem riven by rivalry and backbiting. The Press Officer feels there is a lack of support, and the DSI in charge is unpopular.
The police begin a house to house investigation, and Beam wakes up Sarah, who has been asleep, she has jet- lag and is disorientated. On learning the time from Beam, she dashes out of her flat, and opens a shed door to dump her rubbish. There, crouching in the darkness, she finds Ethan, and the dog. Ethan says "I was supposed to look after Rosie", and Sarah screams to the police to come quickly. Sarah is seen as a heroine for finding the little boy. Ethan cannot tell the police much other than the dog bit the man, and the man had a dirty white van. Hazel becomes more and more suspicious of her son, Kyle's behaviour. He has a cut on his hand, and he threw all his clothes into the washing machine when he comes home. She checks out his room, but finds nothing. Kyle goes into his room later, knowing Hazel has been there. He rummages through a drawer and fondles a key.
Meanwhile journalist Josh smells a story, and persuades his editor to run a picture of attractive Leanne on their front page. Theirs is a small local newspaper, and he wants to run a more exciting story than Golden Weddings. He does this despite getting the brush off from Defne, who is trying to keep the story under wraps. Josh took photos for the paper at the home where Vic, Leanne's Grandad, resides, and he manages to converse with Vic about his granddaughter. He eventually persuades Vic to loan him the key to his mobile home, in order to sniff around for clues and background details. But when he arrives at the mobile home, he is astonished to discover little Rosie on the bed seemingly unharmed. He calls the police and takes pictures for his paper and dashes off to his office, leaving Rosie with neighbours, but misses Kyle who, on arriving at the mobile home in his white van, is arrested by police.
Defne eventually persuades Matt to give a press conference, and Barbara agrees to speak as well. The press conference goes very badly, as one journalist poses the question to Matt "did you know your wife was pregnant?" Matt, badly shaken, storms off. It is left to Barbara to appeal to whoever has any information about Leanne. At first, she is calm, then she gives in to a scream of panic and grief in front of them all. After the debacle, DSI Barclay is rapped by his superior for not participating and supporting the press. He remains aloof, but agrees to help.
Sarah is finding it hard to let go of the Wellings family, and starts seeing them regularly. Matt tells her he can't start a relationship with her, other than friendship. She is upset at this, and eventually tells him her own, traumatic past, in which her dad murdered her mum. Sarah was 5 at the time. This seems to explain her rather unbalanced behaviour since finding Ethan. Tanya has left to live with her grandparents and expresses her feelings of guilt to John. She tells him she didn't want to visit "Greats" because "his room smells" and now she feels this would never have happened had she been with them. John tries to reassure her. Eventually Tanya goes to stay with her dad in France. The police have a lead that Leanne may have started seeing her ex- husband, but they haven't followed it up. Barclay is obsessed with following the flower seller, a Bosnian, who may have links with illegal immigration from Macedonia. This frustrates the rest of the team.
After 28 days DSI Barclay comes under scrutiny from his superiors in the Met as he has no leads on the case at all. They are about to submit a report and are asking the team questions. His colleague Amy is frustrated he hasn't named a suspect, and thinks he is holding off naming Matt as Matt is black. Barclay denies this. Later a body is found by the dog shelter owner, whilst out walking his dogs. This leads to a very tense few hours for everyone until the body is identified. During this time Matt makes an unwise admission and Simone, the family support officer, finally arrests him. But the body is not that of Leanne.
On day 33 it is August Bank Holiday and John and Barbara call round to collect Ethan and Rosie for a fun run event at the local boating lake. To her utter dismay, Barbara discovers Matt giving an interview to reporters. She storms out and tells John "You were right about Matt". It appears that Sarah has set the whole thing up. Defne is taking part in the fun run and Beam is there to support her. Josh is there to cover the event as well. No- one realises how the day will end. Simone takes the children to the fun run, leaving Matt and Sarah alone together. They end up in bed, despite Matt's reluctance. Suddenly at the fun run a boater on the lake starts shouting.... he spots a body in the water. This time there's no uncertainty, it's Leanne's body that's been found. For the family at least, there's closure. John insists on seeing Leanne's body, despite Barclay's appeals to his common sense. It is day 79. Amy is about to retire, and her colleagues lay on a party for her. Drunk, she gives a speech about not missing "you bunch of tossers"; in reality she is terrified at the prospect of life without her work. Barclay takes her home and sobers her up. Before she retired the forensic lab did her one last favour: they have identified the fibres under Leanne's fingernails as carpet. It becomes apparent to Barclay that Leanne, desperate to give a clue to her would be rescuers, deliberately scraped up the fibres so they would be found. It was also established that she was alive when she was dumped in the lake. John is languishing in a psychiatric hospital, following an overdose. Barclay had warned him about seeing Leanne after 5 weeks underwater, and he's traumatised. Only Tanya comes to see him, and it's obvious she loves her Grandad, mirroring her mum's devotion to Vic, despite her protestations of "who needs love, anyway". Barbara won't come and see him; she's too embarrassed. Beam is irritated by the dog shelter man, who insists on confessing to killing Leanne, "She was so beautiful!"
Kyle is in court, he is remanded in custody despite pleas from his defence team. He is being beaten up regularly as a "nonce" and he wants to be bailed to his mum's house. The judge refuses, however, and a desperate Kyle manages to escape from the police van taking him back to prison. He gets run over, but continues on his way, eventually ending up at Rosie and Ethan's house. Matt isn't there, ironically he's got wind that Kyle has escaped and is stalking Kyle's mum's house with his army friend, Gaz.
Eventually Kyle is cornered at the gym, and Gaz kicks him several times, even though Kyle's told him to get an ambulance, "I've been run over". Kyle is the key to it all, as Matt discovers. The police finally piece together Leanne's last hours, and it would seem that the fiery Leanne picked the wrong person to confront, and was accidentally badly hurt. It also transpires that Leanne spent her last hours with Rosie, the result of some mad idea by Kyle that Rosie would be safe with her mother. The fibres, are, of course, from her beloved Grandad's mobile home. In the final scene, Sarah stands apart from the little group of Matt, Tanya, Ethan and Rosie as they sit at Leanne's grave. She tells Matt that he has helped her move on, because of the way he's handling the tragedy.It remains to be seen whether he lets her back in.
[edit] Themes
The drama is less about the murder of Leanne, and more about how it affects her family. Her mother Barbara in particular learns a painful truth about her relationship with her father; almost too late she realises what she has with John. Tanya, too, undergoes a difficult personal change. Her beloved dad deserts her callously, and it is left to Matt to pick up the pieces. Far from perfect and inarticulate, Matt struggles with the guilt of knowing the last conversation with Leanne was a stupid row. Worse still, he is betrayed by his best friend. Sarah is a needy and damaged person who manages to learn and move on, despite her apparent failed relationship with Matt. The police do not appear in a good light, they seem too cynical and divided among themselves to work effectively.
[edit] Cast
David Oyelowo - Matt Wellings
Penelope Wilton - Barbara Poole
Hugh Bonneville - DSI Iain Barclay
Edward Woodward - Vic Marsham
Sarah Smart - Sarah Wheeler
Janet McTeer - DS Amy Foster
Patrick Malahide - John Poole
Nikki Amuka-Bird - PC Simone Farnes
Doug Allen - Gary Machin
Michelle Bonnard - Defne Topcu
Rory Kinnear - Kyle Betts
Margot Leicester - Hazel Betts
Lucinda Dryzek - Tanya Wellings
Lee Massey - Ethan Wellings
Tyler Anthony - Rosie Wellings
Al Weaver - Josh Fairley
Phil Davis - Mic Danes
Richard Harrington - Daf Parry
Christine Tremarco - Leanne Wellings
Harriet Walter - ACC Jennie Griffin
Charlie Creed-Miles - DC Stephen Beam
