You Don’t Know Me, review: this propulsive thriller will make a star of Samuel Adewunmi

The murder weapon was found in the defendant’s flat. Mobile phone data placed him at the scene of the crime. Traces of the victim’s blood were found beneath the defendant’s fingernails. But as You Don’t Know Me (BBC One) began, the defendant was standing up in court and telling us he didn’t do it.

The evidence is stacked against him but there’s a four-part drama to be had here, so we know there’s a lot more to it. He protests his innocence by giving his own closing speech to the jury, having sacked his barrister, a framing device that allows the story to be told in flashback. It’s a propulsive thriller adapted from a novel by Imran Mahmood, a criminal defence barrister, so we can trust he has the legal details right even if no defendant has ever addressed a jury quite like this.

Unless I missed it, we don’t hear the character’s name but he’s billed in the credits as “Hero” so let’s go with it. Hero (Samuel Adewunmi) is a decent guy trapped in a nightmare. He’s a car salesman who loves his mother. One day he chats up Kyra (Sophie Wilde), a pretty woman he sees on the bus. I thought that sort of thing had died out with the advent of Tinder, but anyway. This sets in motion a chain of events that draw him deeper and deeper into a murky world of guns and gangs, as Kyra suddenly vanishes.

Adewunmi is having a moment, when the gods align and two high profile projects are released in short order. He was the mysterious stranger who showed up in ITV’s Angela Black, and now he’s here on BBC One prime-time. There is an energy to him; stardom beckons.

The setting is south London and the cast is black, which feels entirely natural (in some dramas it can feel as if panicked executives are shoehorning actors of colour into minor roles). There are two other strong performances, from Roger Jean Nsengiyumva as the drug dealer Jamil, and Bukky Bakray as Hero’s little sister. Wilde is less convincing as Kyra; that may be down to the writing, which has given her “likes reading books” in place of a personality.

The screenwriter is Tom Edge, whose last drama series was Vigil. You Don’t Know Me doesn’t go anywhere near that show’s ludicrous twists and turns. But even when things do get outlandish – I’ve seen all four episodes, so can tell you that the plot does start tying itself in knots further down the line – the drama is anchored by Adewunmi’s utterly believable performance as a desperate man at the mercy of events.