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Temple, episode 1 review: this Sky One remake is utterly bonkers – yet somehow brilliant

Mark Strong stars in Temple - © Sky UK Limited
Mark Strong stars in Temple - © Sky UK Limited

Even without the whiplash-inducing plot twist at the end of episode one, Temple, Sky One’s virtually indescribable new drama, was bona fide bonkers.

Here was just another story of a doctor who’d set up a secret hospital deep beneath a working London Underground station after his scientist wife had died of a little-known disease that she hadn’t told him she had because she’d been working on a cure for it with a friend and colleague who – one could easily forget to mention – was having an affair with her husband. TV today is so predictable.

Incredibly, though, Temple held together because it was shot through with several strands of tension. Firstly, there was the suspense of the thriller plotline, which intercut the story of the secret hospital with a Reservoir Dogs-style heist gone wrong. Every hospital needs bodies and the botched robbery provided a very, very bloody one.

Secondly there was the tension of how in the name of sacred narrative rules were the writers going to pull this off? Temple is based on a Norwegian series and you did wonder at times if its British adaptors had been given the wrong dictionary, such were the adolescent moodswings between comedy, tragedy and occasional horror (apply here if you want to know exactly what a newly-removed spleen looks like). Temple had the air of a series that wanted to be on Sky Atlantic, the pay TV provider’s more premium, HBO-ish offering, when it grows up.

It probably should be, to be honest – it was too brutal for family viewing but it was artfully shot in that dingy brown palette that has become the default for "quality" TV and it featured several excellent performances. Mark Strong, as protagonist Dr Danny Milton, was required to be at his most inscrutable in order to hold the whole thing together but as so often he delivered, both hero and anti-hero, threat and saviour, sometimes in the same scene.

Carice Van Houten stars in Temple - Credit: Sky
Carice Van Houten stars in Temple Credit: Sky

Daniel Mays, who appears to be Milton’s accomplice though we know not why at this point, was also good as a comic foil. Carice Van Houten, as Strong’s wife’s scientist friend, proved that she was underused in Game of Thrones and Lily Newmark as Strong’s teenage daughter is a scowling revelation.

What all of that adds up to is as yet unclear, but shows like Breaking Bad or Amazon’s underrated Patriot have shown that there’s no reason why farce, tragedy, comedy and grand guignol can’t co-exist in the same hour. Temple is not yet in their orbit, still teetering too close to plain daft, but like a drunk careening down a pavement late at night, it’s hard not to keep watching.