The House Across the Street

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Shirley says: "Claudia’s a quiet woman, who’s on her own a lot and in her own thoughts. She has been lonely for a while, she’s had a lot of medical things going on and I think she’s having a breakdown. Then one day everything changes when she walks up her path towards her house and sees that there’s something going on in her street. Maybe the case of missing Emily is what she needs to feel worthy and alive again."

When she hears about a local girl, Emily Winter, who has gone missing she seizes her opportunity to become a hero and make some friends. Soon Claudia becomes embroiled in the case and grows fixated on uncovering the truth. But not only is she determined to find out what happened to Emily, she's also becoming obsessed with the Winter family at the center of the case — Emily’s devastated father Owen, her cold mother Sabine, and her 12-year-old brother, Dean. Shirley Henderson leads the cast of The House Across the Street, a brand new Channel 5 drama. The Harry Potter star plays Claudia, a lonely single mother and school nurse longing for connection. The final episodes will air next week on Monday, October 24 and Tuesday, October 25 at the same time. The good thing about Channel 5 is that they let me have all four episodes of their dramas in advance, so I can watch the whole thing and manage your expectations. Thus I can tell you that The House Across the Street doesn’t build to a brilliant finale. It crams far too much into its final episode and goes a little bit too mad (put it this way: there is a scene in which a woman puts on a pair of her male neighbour’s underpants). Claudia (Shirley Henderson) is the school nurse and neighbour of the missing child. She has just recovered from breast cancer, her ex-husband has a new partner and a baby on the way, and she is losing connection with her teenage son. Claudia becomes creepily over-involved in the case, and we’re left to work out if that’s because she has something to do with it, or whether she’s just lonely and desperate to feel needed. The other suspects include George (Line of Duty’s Craig Parkinson, an actor with the charisma to lift every show he’s in), who arrives at the school to teach adult literacy; Joanne (Sara Powell), a nosy neighbour who appears to relish the drama; and the mother and father of the missing girl, because aren’t we conditioned not to trust the parents in these cases?Emily’s mum Sabine has secretly been struggling in her marriage to Owen, which isn’t as rosy as it seems from the outside. But when the police investigation takes a dramatic turn, Sabine and Claudia strike up an unlikely friendship. The House Across the Street is not based on a true story and is not originally a book. Here is everything we know about the drama. Line of Duty's Craig Parkinson and Harry Potter star Shirley Henderson lead the cast of an all new Channel 5 drama series. The House Across the Street focuses on a missing child and a mother longing to be reconnected.

Shirley says: "I loved the danger of it, the delicate quality, the sense of the unknown. I was very surprised to be offered the role, though! I don’t think I’ve ever had this big a part in a TV show, where I’m in almost every scene – I was really nervous about it!" Fragile, softly spoken and hauntedly distracted, Henderson’s portrayal of Claudia was masterful. Glints of something harder – desperation? Madness? – were revealed beneath her brittle façade. Claudia was close enough to breaking point that her fixation on Emily’s disappearance made sense. As a proactive neighbour, she suddenly had a new sense of purpose and a role to play. Also in the cast is Craig Parkinson, best known for his role as Matthew 'Dot' Cottan in Line of Duty, and he plays George, a school teacher who is new to the community and many are suspicious of him.There will be four hour-long episodes of The House Across the Street, with the first airing on Monday, October 17 at 9pm on Channel 5 and My5. The second episode will then air the following day (Tuesday, October 18) at 9pm, with the final two instalments showing next week. But it’s not too bad. Netflix parodied this sort of thing in The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, and they can never be taken too seriously, but this one has a pleasingly off-kilter tone. No character behaves quite as you’d expect them to in a situation such as this, which involves a schoolgirl who disappears from a playground near her home. The House Across the Street combined sharply observed characters with a genuinely compelling concept. While some of the dialogue veered a little too close to exposition to be convincing – “the breast reconstruction has been a success after your double mastectomy”, said a doctor, as though Claudia might have forgotten her recent surgery –, the drama’s well-paced intrigue made its script’s occasional clangers feel forgivable. Shirley says: "Sometimes I’d sit on the pavement between scenes just to get my thoughts together and run the lines in my head. Wondering how to bring to life a character that has lots of emotional scenes is always challenging, but getting to have magic moments with such a brilliant cast and crew made it all worthwhile!" The House Across The Street follows Claudia, a lonely single mother. Recovering from breast cancer while working as a school nurse, Claudia’s days appear bleak.

Shirley says: "Claudia initially recognises the sadness in these parents who have lost their daughter. I don’t think she really knows she’s becoming obsessively involved, though. Maybe if she just sat down properly and thought, what on earth am I doing, she’d see it. But there’s something pulling her in. She also hasn’t got anybody to talk to about it, so it begins to emotionally affect her." Vikings star Ian Lloyd Anderson stars alongside Shirley and Craig as Emily Winter’s dad Owen, with The Fall’s Lisa Dwyer Hogg as her mum Sabine. Unforgotten actor Sara Powell plays their neighbor Joanne, Out of Innocence’s Ronan Leahy plays Joanne’s husband Dave and Luke Griffin from The Frankenstein Chronicles plays Leon - Shirley’s ex-husband. How many episodes in The House Across the Street? Craig says: "George is recently separated from an unhappy marriage. He’s a good, loving dad, who’s trying to make a new start. He doesn’t know that many people in the area, but he begins a friendship with Claudia that turns, he believes, into a sort of relationship." Shirley says: " It’s the human condition to be curious. People are interested in the sad and the bad things that happen in life. But the thing about our story is that Claudia goes to extremes – she goes to a point where her interested could be dangerous!"

Where you've seen the cast of The House Across the Street before

The second episode will air at 9pm on Tuesday, October 18 and then the drama will return to screens on Monday, October 24, and Tuesday, October 25 for the final two episodes.