A widely acclaimed drama, The Children, is set for the 8.30pm timeslot from Monday to Wednesday next week on DStv's BBC Entertainment.
The mini-series opens with a man called Cameron (Kevin Whately of Peak Practice) driving home to see blue flashing lights in his car mirror - it's an unmarked police car.
He pulls over, thinking nothing of it, and the car races past him. But as he turns into his street, he realises the police are stopping at his house and running towards his door.
Something terrible has happened... a murder.
Rewind six months, and Sue (Geraldine Sommerville of Cracker) has asked Cameron to move in with her and her daughter, eight-year-old Emily. It's a chance for everyone to move on - a new start.
Sue's husband, Paul (Ian Puleston-Davies), left her for another woman and has set up home with his new girlfriend, who is struggling to cope with her newborn baby in a tiny flat.
Cameron divorced Anne (Lesley Sharp), leaving her with their 14-year-old son, Jack. But Anne wants her youth back - she's lost the best years of her life to being a wife and mother and has decided it's about time she went out and started living.
Finding it difficult to cope with his mother's party lifestyle and stay on the rails himself, Jack moves in with his dad.
In the middle of all this is Emily. She desperately wants to be part of her father's new family.
She's struggling to cope with her new stepbrother and her behaviour is becoming increasingly frustrating and difficult to explain.
Then, something dreadful happens, ensuring that things will never be the same again.
Envy, jealousy, fear and anger constantly threaten the delicate happiness Sue and Cameron have built up.
As this emotional drama unfolds, it becomes clear that some wounds may be too difficult to heal.
"The Children centres on contemporary family life and how we bring up our children when parents have split up. It's about new partners, old families, new families, new skins not yet comfortable," says a DStv spokesman.
The story is close to writer Lucy Gannon's heart, and has had a very long gestation.
She has gone on record to state: "I conceived the idea when my own daughter, now a mother of three, was a teenager.
"After the initial rush of enthusiasm for it, I became almost frightened of the idea, certainly wary of it.
"The treatment kicked around in the hard-drive of my computer for several years until I felt I could face it, and argue for it, in a liberal world where what it says is unwelcome and hotly contested."
She adds that the script doesn't point a finger at anyone.
"I have been divorced once, widowed once, and I know what it is to bring up a child on my own. My late husband had four children by a previous marriage.
"I know that life is a series of ricochets from one unexpected circumstance to the next, and that good people do their best for their children, sometimes failing, but always trying, and that sometimes self deception is the only recourse we have.
"The film is not about judging people, it just tries to show life as it is, to say: 'Is this really us? Is this what we do? Is this who we want to be?'
"Of course, if it isn't us, if it's not what we do, then no one needs to feel even vaguely unsettled by it. We can pretend it's just a fairytale and not an allegory at all."
When actors came in to read for the roles they were often riled by aspects of the story and could become quite vehement discussing the culpability of a character, says the DStv spokesman.
"What was interesting was that different people invariably picked out different suspects. The power of this piece lies in the fact that we can all recognise bits of ourselves - and it's not a comforting picture."
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By Billy Suter
