ITV’s one-off drama Half Broken Things was adapted from the crime-novel of the same name by Morag Joss which was published in 2003 and won the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger award in the same year. Not your regular crime fiction this though. It centres around three characters who are only accidentally in the wrong because each of them believes they have limited choices, and the writing (and, in the case of last night’s drama, acting) is so good you find yourself on their side, enjoying their brief idyllic existence even though you know it’s based on lies, deceit and, in the end, murder.

Penelope Wilton (Five Days, Doctor Who, Falling) starred as the house-sitter who is being forced into retirement and who has one last assignment – at the beautiful country house Walden Manor – before facing an uncertain future. A lonely figure, Jean has always longed for a family, and when Michael (Daniel Mays) and Steph (Sinead Matthews) come to the house after escaping from Steph’s abusive boyfriend, it begins to look as though the three of them might become a sort of family since each of them has been looking for somewhere to belong. None of them realises the strength of this need until they are forced to face up to a crisis.

Jean lives in the borderlands between sanity and madness. Long before the refugees arrive on her doorstep she has decided to live at Walden as if she owns it. She has opened up all the locked rooms, replaced all the famiy photographs and started selling off the “family silver”

Michael, a petty crook who has twisted his unrequited desire to be an actor into a role as a part-time con man, has stolen two twelfth-century statuettes from a nearby church. By chance he meets up with the heavily pregnant Steph and her boyfriend at a filling station, where he has lost his temper with her for messing up his beloved boy-racer hatchback. Desperate, Steph pleads with Michael to give her a lift while the boyfriend is paying for his petrol, and the two lost souls make their getaway just in time.

Their arrival at Walden cements the delusional for Jean, and the trauma of Steph giving birth and the baby’s subsequent death bind the three together. As the long summer days wind along and they enjoy the house, its gardens and beautiful surroundings, they begin to believe that their idyll will never end.

Speaking of his character, actor Danny Mays said: “That element of loneliness is much more within Michael and Jean and there is a definite bond between them because of that. She tells him she never had children but wishes she’d had a son like him and he feels the same. He never had that mother figure in his life and it affected him. So they form a strong relationship very quickly.”

Steph takes a job as a child minder for a woman whose husband is working abroad and whose in-laws take no interest in the baby. But when one day the child’s grandfather turns up at their house and offers Steph a lift back to Walden, the situation takes a turn for the worse. Because Grandad is none other than the vicar from whom Michael stole the statuettes, and he recognises Michael immediately. He starts to call the police and, seeing their magical life in a country estate evaporating before his eyes, in a moment of blind panic Michael caves in the vicar’s head with a crocquet ball.

Horrified, but implicitly accepting of Michael’s actions, the others help to cover up the crime – driving his car back into the village so that it is seen and then dumping it miles away. Michael buries the body in woodland and, although badly traumatised, the three start to pick up the pieces of their special life. But Jean has one more bit of bad news: the owners of the house are returning from their summer holiday and the three outsiders will soon be, literally, outside once again.

Jean briefly considers a further murder as the solution to the problem, and puts the proposal to Michael. His loyalty to Jean is severely tested. The original murder was done in the heat of the moment but this cold premeditated act goes against his character. Steph too feels uneasy and tells Michael she wants no part of it. In the end, they tell Jean they can’t go through with it and Jean, unable to face returning to her life of loneliness, suggests they all go away together. Only the journey she has in mind is much further and more final than anything the other two expect.

Apart from a singular lack of any police investigation into the disappearance of the vicar, I thought the plot held up pretty well, but what made this one-off drama so special were the performances of the three leads (as well as the fabulous setting of the country pile). Each completely believable in their own right, when they came together it was easy to imagine them thinking that they had found a refuge from a world where they felt misunderstood and misused and which in turn had never treated them with any kindness or respect. Kindness and respect were two of the qualities they found at Walden, as well as love, safety and a degree of happiness. That happiness was always tinged with the sadness of knowing that their refuge was temporary, and this gave the drama another dimension. A tension that ran through the whole two hours and made this, for me, one of the most enjoyable dramas that has been televised this year.

ITV’s season of one-off Sunday night dramas continues next week with A Room With A View.