Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Robert Glenister, Indira Varma, Dino Fetscher, Neil Stuke, Christiane Paul, Lesley Sharp, Dominik Tiefenthaler, Michael Maloney, Anjli Mohindra, Kevin Doyle, Jonathan Ojinnaka, William Flanagan, John Duttine, William Ash, Daniel Drewes, Polly Walker, Richard Wheeldon, Jason Done, Danny Hutson.

When taking on a big television production, one with a tale that should be enormous and potentially gripping beyond anything else on television in a single year, it often helps the series realise its own levels of genius by not overpowering it with too many subplots and characters to whom the story would not miss one single iota. Some of the greatest mini-series ever have relied solely on the narrow focus, on the detail and not the illusion and it is unfortunately a piece of television advice forgotten largely in the creation of Paranoid.