Imagine this: you are happily bringing up your three-year-old son when the hospital where he was born summons you to a meeting. There was a terrible mix-up, they say, and two babies were switched at birth. You were accidentally sent home with the wrong one, and another set of parents has raised your biological child. What would you do?
This is the premise of Playing Nice (ITV1), starring James Norton as Pete, the doting father who receives the bombshell news. He and his partner, Maddie (Niamh Algar), face a choice. Do they carry on as before? Do they form a relationship with the other little boy and his parents? Or do they go much further and swap the children back?
The series is based on a novel by JP Delaney, but mothers taking home the wrong baby – while vanishingly rare – has happened in real life. A case emerged recently of two women from the West Midlands who discovered in their 50s that they had been switched as babies – the NHS has admitted liability.
It throws up all kinds of knotty dilemmas and opportunities for heartbreak. But this is an ITV thriller, so we’re in unserious territory. Frequently you’ll wonder why the characters aren’t more traumatised by the situation. It’s more-ish, though, one of those bingeably implausible dramas that you will thoroughly enjoy if you surrender to it rather than yelling: “But that would never happen!” “Of course the courts/police/social workers/lawyers wouldn’t do that!” “This is nuts, why aren’t these people ringing 999?”
If Pete is the lovely dad at the centre of the story – and so placid that at times you’ll be willing him to start punching people’s lights out – Miles is the super-villain. Actor James McArdle makes a very good bad guy as the father of the other little boy, barging his way into Pete and Maddie’s lives. He reveals himself from the outset to be a smug bully and a controlling husband to Lucy (Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay).
Initially, both couples say they would like to keep the children they have raised, but for the two families to be friends. Except there are three more episodes to go, so we know that’s not going to work out. Maddie seems to feel an instant bond with her biological son, while Pete does not.
There are passing references to Maddie’s postnatal depression and the stress of spending days in the neonatal intensive care unit with a premature baby. But these are secondary to the twists – are all of these parents what they seem? – and the anticipation of what dastardly Miles will do next.
