DARK obsession

Shirley Henderson plays a lonely woman who becomes fixated by the case of a missing child...

Shirley Henderson takes on her very first lead TV role in Channel 5’s new slow-burn thriller The House Across the Street, which has been penned by White House Farm writer Giula Sandler.

In the four-part thriller, the Harry Potter actor plays lonely, depressed single mum Claudia, who appears to be on the edge of a breakdown after being diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoing a double mastectomy, while also struggling to parent her troubled 12-year-old son Rhys.

But Claudia finds purpose and much-needed human interaction in a most disturbing way when she becomes embroiled in a community search to find seven-year-old Emily Winter, a little girl who has gone missing from the playground in Claudia’s cul-de-sac.

AWAKENING

‘Claudia’s a quiet woman who's on her own a lot and in her own thoughts. One day that changes when she walks up her path towards her house and sees that there’s something going on in her street; explains Henderson, 56, who has also appeared in Happy Valley and The Nest.