The Night Caller review: The Night Caller is good in parts, but it feels like they phoned-in the ending

We've all heard them, at some point during a sleepless night, those through-the-night radio phone-in hosts inviting calls from the night-shifters on the topics of the day.

They lean in close to the mic, whispering to us as we plod blearily about the place wondering what we're doing up at this hour, ASMR-ing their way into our brains.

And what better voice for the job than Sean Pertwee, a man with a voice so gravelly-deep it sounds like he was smoking 20-a-day in the womb? He stars in The Night Caller (Channel 5, Sun-Weds, 9pm) as Lawrence Brightway, the late-night phone-in DJ for Liverpool.

One of the callers is Tony Conroy, a former teacher who rents a cab for the night shift around the city – caught impressionistically through the smeared windscreen of Tony's cab or reflected in rain-filled potholes.

A good job, really, given that most of it was shot in Dublin.

Tony (Robert Glenister) is a troubled man – we can tell he's troubled because he has a perpetually haunted expression, and we see flashbacks to a young boy in school uniform floating apparently lifelessly in a swimming pool.

For Tony, Lawrence's soothing tones are initially company during the long hours in the cab, but gradually he becomes something more – a close friend, someone who understands him and his troubles.

“It's a constant grind,” Lawrence whispers breathily across the airwaves and into Tony's ears. “I know how hard it can be to cope, how hard it can be just to keep on going.”

Tony, you see, feels hard done by, feels the system did him wrong, that his “face didn't fit”.

But, this being a Channel 5 drama, you can't help feeling that Lawrence's man-of-the-people shtick rings hollow, which inevitably will mean problems for Tony.

Unusually for Channel 5, The Night Caller is a slow-burner. It doesn't rely on the usual drama of the week tropes like sudden twists, identical twins or increasingly improbable decisions made by the characters.

Much of it plays like a two-hander between Glenister and Pertwee, as Tony calls into Lawrence's show, trying to explain how he went from being a respected head of science to a lowly taxi driver on the graveyard shift.

Their two faces fill the frame often, and it uses a neat couple of tricks to really emphasise how close Tony believes he's getting to Lawrence, how friendly their relationship has become.

And while it overplays the point about how we should be wary of people telling us exactly what we want to hear, and claiming they know how it really is and how we really feel, The Night Caller doesn't use a sledgehammer, merely a light tap.

However, you can see where the story's going, as Lawrence tells his listeners to “stick together, to listen to each other, to protect the vulnerable who have no one to look out for them”.

So much so that by the time we get to the climax – which should have been a tense, nervous stand-off between Tony and Lawrence – it comes over a bit too much like Pat Farrell's last, desperate hurrah in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa.

By Channel 5 standards, The Night Caller is solid piece of work – more interestingly plotted and interestingly shot than many others – but it doesn't quite hit the heights, and by the end you may find yourself dropping off as Lawrence whispers sweet nothings into your ear.