The second episode of The Frighteners shares a lot of similarities with the first, an isolated setting after hours and an unstable element brought into it.
Conservative MP Tony Wardle (John Standing) is wrapping up his scheduled evening of meeting constituents. After sending his aide home, a man named Bob Blaw (Joe Lynch) arrives and asks that Wardle sees him immediately. Blaw is skittish and muddled, which Wardle initially concedes may be due to his previous career as a professional boxer, but then Blaw begins to tell him a tragic story and demands that Wardle helps.
The performances are again really good stuff. Standing, of course is a recognisable face for performances on both sides of the Atlantic and he's great again here. Irish actor Joe Lynch is perhaps less well known but has more to do and pulls it off admirably. The menace is always there under the surface, but he expertly cranks it up, then releases a little tension every now and then. He also does this whilst never letting up on the idea that he's suffering from some form of impairment, either early onset Alzheimers or something caused by the grief he's suffering.
All that said, the story suffers somewhat from its mediocre conclusion. I've tried to get away from the idea that all these anthology shows require a twist, or downbeat, ending in order to be good, but in this particular case the show just dissipates away leaving some of the specifics about whether or not his story is real, up in the air. It doesn't undermine the whole episode entirely but it does mean that it's hard to recommend that you go out or your way to hunt it down.
(But ultimately it's about a Tory who says he's going to help someone and then doesn't. Sounds about right. "Politics" )
