Grief encounters

Joanna Lumley and Keeley Hawes play a mother and daughter in ITV’s darkly comic drama about a family torn apart by a sudden death

- HANNAH DAVIES, REBECCA MAHONEY

ITV’s new six-part drama Finding Alice will strike a universal chord with anyone who has suffered a bereavement.

The blackly comic series, which has been created by the team behind The Durrells, follows Alice Dillon (Keeley Hawes), who has just moved into a dream state-of-the-art home, designed and built by her partner, Harry (Jason Merrells).

But their future together is destroyed when Harry dies in a bizarre accident on their first night in their new ‘smart’ house after seemingly falling down the swanky floating staircase.

Following Harry’s shock death, Alice’s grief is exacerbated by a sense of disorientation in the surreal new house. She has just lost her partner, yet she can’t even find the fridge or work out how to open the curtains.

She’s also having to deal with police suspicion, Harry’s distraught parents, and her acerbic mum Sarah (Joanna Lumley), while parenting her teenage daughter Charlotte (played by newcomer Isabella Pappas) – plus dealing with the discovery that Harry has left behind a trail of debts and secrets.