As TV corpse aficionados know, the secret to good crime drama isn’t to make the murder interesting, or the investigating officer problematic, but to surround the crime with a cast of suspects who resemble people, instead of caricature crash test dummies to be pummelled by accusations. Broadchurch did it by creating a town bound by a police tape cats-cradle of secrets and lies. What Remains does the same, but within the smaller scale of a house.

And somehow pressing people close together in this house terrine makes everyone feel more isolated. The compartmentalised nature of their lives gives the show a sensation of a series of dramatic vignettes all revolving around the singular, more dramatic event of murder. Each life behind the door is so satisfyingly three dimensional you could almost scrub out any mention of a corpse, call the show ‘House of Cads’ and re-package it as a drama about a group of people living lives of quiet, WiFi enabled, desperation.

Desperation, and also lies. Lies scattered around like underwear catalogues and delivered with the delicious passive-aggressive ripostes that Tony Basgallop creates. People lying to each other, lying to themselves, lying online, lying down in bed. Even lonely Len Harper obfuscates his status as a detective to suspects, all while looking like a salt-scoured John Slattery.

On more shaky sympathetic territory is Russell Tovey’s Michael, graduating from resentful man-child to creepy neo-stalker in an intrusion that vacillates between the villainous and the valorous. The way he moves from childish to chilling also shows why Tovey should be given the chance to play some wrong ‘uns on our screens: he brings such a delightfully unstable quantity to proceedings that you have to keep watching just to see what his face will do next.

Michael’s still not so repugnant as rutting teen Adam (Skins star Alexander Arnold, vying for BAFTA’s Most Slappable Character in a Drama) sparring with his father’s girlfriend Patricia, and then taunting Len over the phone. Surely it’s teenage bravado rather than anything approaching a confession?

Yet even Adam’s out-done by Elaine, who’s a construct of such unpleasant sensations that she elicits feelings of almost pantomime outrage in viewers; you just want to boo and hiss and throw your Malteasers at the screen whenever she appears to spit venom through her lipstick at Melissa. It’s a wonderfully controlled performance by Indira Varma in a part that could easily be so OTT bitchy that Joan Collins herself would probably claw your eyes out and pinch your Snickers for it.

‘Gestalt…I like it’ murmurs Len Harper, musing the concept of a whole that’s more than the sum of it’s parts. So perhaps we’re wrong. Perhaps it’s not the ‘B’ word we need. Maybe it’s the ‘G’ word. Because even with its excellent cast, writing, and direction, What Remains is decidedly Gestalt drama. And we like it. We like it a lot.

Aired at 9pm on Sunday 1 September 2013 on BBC One.

> Order What Remains on DVD on Amazon.

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