Instinct is too quiet and subdued a film to fully work. The script comes from crime fiction writer Lizzie Mickery. But Mickery’s plot seems too laidback at the outset. She never lets it turn with tightly wound twists and jolts, but rather spends too much time in the earlier scenes on subplots concerning the murdered woman’s husband Tom Ward discovering he has a son from his sperm donor days and Anthony Flanagan’s meeting with his half-sister (Christine Bottomley). On the plus side, Lizzie Mickery delivers some fine and penetrating dialogue, particularly during the scenes between Anthony Flanagan and his sister. And by the middle of the show, things start to get quite interesting – we see Tom Ward, whose wife has just been murdered, seducing the mother of his sperm donor son (Claire Hackett); while Anthony Flanagan becomes obsessed with his sister’s safety to the point of having her surveilled while she is out on an internet date with a stranger. What had started out as normal characters has by this point shifted over into quite dubious grounds and you wonder where it is all heading. Eventually Lizzie Mickery mounts this to quite a complex plot involving the various suspects and their connections – there’s a double-level mirror plot where both the investigating detective and chief suspect both discover relatives they never knew about. The only disappointment comes in the revelation of the killer’s identity, which fails to hold any major surprise.

One of the great pluses of Instinct is Anthony Flanagan in the lead role as the investigating detective. Flanagan is an actor who has always lurked around British film and television in various guest roles and bit parts but has rarely stepped to the fore. Here he takes the lead role with quite a degree of effectiveness. Flanagan has a watery boyish face – he initially seems someone too quiet and lacking in internal strength. But he surprises, showing a cool, fierce intellectual strength in particular when he first pieces together that Tom Ward might be the killer. But at the same time you can see that he is keeping himself tightly emotionally bound and toiling with inner control. Also very good is Tom Ward who plays the part of the suspected husband with handsome charm.