Somewhere Boy review: A charming paean to the indomitable human spirit, anchored by a star-making turn

When I see my latest energy bill, the price of petrol at the pump, the luminaries currently installed in government… well, living off the grid, away from the grip of society, looks rather appealing. That’s how Danny (Lewis Gribben) has spent the first two decades of his life in Pete Jackson’s Channel 4 drama Somewhere Boy, raised on nothing more than a diet of mini golf, gramophone records and Charlie Chaplin movies. It all sounds rather idyllic.

“Busy day tomorrow,” says Steve (Rory Keenan), Danny’s father, who has kept him locked up in their family home. “Danny?” he calls to his son, “love you mate.” Next thing we know, Steve has apparently shot himself, and Danny is packed off to live with his aunt, Sue (Lisa McGrillis) and her son Aaron (Samuel Bottomley). From there, Somewhere Boy is an examination of which is a more disastrous way to raise a child: in our horrible society or locked in a cabin in the woods watching Casablanca on repeat? On the “outside”, Aaron struggles to make meaningful friendships and relentlessly objectifies women, calling them “roast beef” and saying “she might get it”. Danny struggles with, well, everything.

“Though we don’t excuse his actions,” the Vicar (Matthew Bates) says at Steve’s funeral, “I hope we can find it in our hearts to forgive him.” For Danny, there is nothing to forgive; for everyone else in his life, there is no chance of forgiveness. Locking his son up at home, Steve created a narrative of a world populated by “monsters”, ensuring Danny could never step outside the square footage of their shared world. When a social worker drops in to visit the family, Danny is confused. “What does she mean, ‘abuse’?” Danny asks, tears welling up in his doe-like eyes. “I weren’t abused!”

As a centrepiece performance, Gribben is utterly compelling as Danny, perfectly synthesising the hardiness of someone raised by a survivalist father with the brittleness of a young man experiencing the ups and downs of adult life for the first time. Bottomley and McGrillis too are excellent – the trio of performances at the heart of Somewhere Boy become an exploration of the different ways humans mask sensitivity. Through practicality, through aggression, through total disassociation. On occasion, the quality of these performances is blunted by a script that sails too close to the on-the-nose wind. “I didn’t know I was gonna have to share my room with a complete mentalist!” yells Aaron.

“I lost your mum, Danny,” Steve tells his little boy in one of the show’s many flashbacks. “I’m not going to lose you, too.” In its darker moments, Somewhere Boy is an exploration of generational trauma, handed down from father to son. It is a thick, dark vein that runs through the tale. But, more often than not, Jackson’s storytelling has a lightness of touch, almost a comic sensibility: this reformed feral child, let loose on civilisation, bringing his hybrid of cynic and ascetic philosophy to the pubs and farms of northern England. The friendship that develops between Danny and Aaron is so winning – so endearing – that it carries the show through the twists and turns of revenge plots and love stories.

With episodes running to just 20 minutes, and a jaunty, almost retro style, Somewhere Boy is a refreshingly un-traumatic take on the rather hackneyed domestic confinement genre. This is no Room, no Michael, no Stockholm, Pennsylvania: instead it is a charming paean to the indomitable human spirit, anchored by a star-making performance from Lewis Gribben.