Number One Fan review: Never mind the quality, feel the width as Channel 5's repertory company keeps pushing out the drama

Seemingly on a fortnightly basis, a new drama pitches up, usually over four consecutive nights, usually involving some kind of thriller plot, and often involving the same faces – so often, in fact, that you could almost say the channel has founded its own TV repertory company.

Among the regular faces of this revolving cast list are Jason Watkins (The Game, Coma and The Catch), Jonas Armstrong (Coma and The Drowning) and Taj Atwal (Cold Call and Too Good to be True).

This fortnight's offering, Number One Fan (Channel 5, Mon-Thurs, 9pm) being a case in point.

Not content with having Jill Halfpenny – recently seen in C5's paranoid planning permission pot-boiler The Feud – this tale also saw Sally Lindsay take a leading role.

Lindsay has appeared in previous C5 efforts such as Cold Call, but also takes the lead in the channel's regular 'cosy crime' show The Madame Blanc Mysteries.

Here, she's anything but cosy, however.

She's Donna, the number one fan of the title, apparently obsessed with Lucy Logan (Halfpenny), a daytime chat show host in pastel dresses which co-ordinate with the soft furnishings of the studio set.

This being a Channel 5 drama, Lucy is hiding a skeleton in her paisley-lined closet.

Again, this being a Channel 5 drama, so is Donna, and it's not long before we discover that several other members of the cast are hiding their own skeletons and that somehow, somewhere, some way, these bony old secrets will all start tumbling out of several wardrobes.

Which is not so bad, I suppose, as long as those skeletons emerge in comprehensible ways, and not just because the plot demands a twist her or en episode-ending revelation there.

Sadly, Number One Fan is structured in such a way that the first three episodes must all end in a cliff-hanger, as if the preceding 40-odd minutes – ads not included – were enough to keep us all hooked and watching.

And it really isn't – in between these revelations are many scenes of worried looking people, meetings between Donna and Lucy in which each reiterates what we've already learned, and a seemingly random subplot involving Lucy's son becoming radicalised online by eco-activists.

The main plot revolves around Lucy's involvement in the death of Dona's brother, who has been demonised on a Jeremy Kyle-style daytime confrontation show hosted by the irredeemably unpleasant Stewart Jones (Life on Mars' Dean Andrews).

You feel this could go in interesting directions, about the kind of shock TV Kyle favoured, the effects of it on the participants and the audience, and whether social media has now taken its place as the sort of community pillory, holding up various unfortunates as the targets of our rotten tomatoes.

Unfortunately, Number One Fan plays it very much, well, by the numbers, and twists and turns its way to the underwhelming end via a number of baffling changes of attitude, and unintentionally funny moments – at one point Donna and Lucy hide behind a wall, popping out from behind it, Scooby Doo-style.

The various storylines – including the son and the eco-activists – do eventually come together in a climax that you think should feel sinister and oppressive, but ends being merely ho-hum.

And while Halfpenny and Lindsay always do their best, there are only so many thriller plot lines in the world, and we've had enough of shadowy figures lurking in baseball caps, long-forgotten traumas resurfacing and revenge being sought.

Still, you can't help but admire Channel 5 – they have hit upon a formula which allows them to produce dozens of hours of TV drama, something the other terrestrial channels seem unable to do.

It may be of variable quality, but while we're waiting for a new series of All Creatures Great and Small – a Channel 5 triumph, frankly – it's much better than nothing.