The bond between a parent and their child is one of the strongest in existence. From the seemingly small things like giving up your food to a curious toddler and taking a day off work to care for a sickly child to immense acts of bravery, the unbreakable bond means leads many people to routinely put their lives on the line without a moment’s hesitation.

The flip side of the coin, though, is that the profoundly deep love a parent holds for their child can sometimes manifest in dark ways. Striving to do the right thing, as Channel 4’s powerful new drama Somewhere Boy shows, can often do more harm than good.

Danny’s sheltered existence is born from a deep personal tragedy: when he was just a baby, his mother was killed in a car crash. Overwhelmed with grief, Steve bought a house in the middle of nowhere and locked Danny in, telling him the world outside was full of monsters waiting to take him away – just like they took his mother.

For 18 years, father and son remained holed up inside the house, listening to Benny Goodman records and watching old movies with no sad endings. Having no point of comparison, Danny was happy with his life; Steve, for his part, believed he’d done the right thing for his child, bringing Danny up safe and warm, away from “murderers and wars and drugs and arsehole governments and burgers and evil”.

Danny’s world comes crashing down, though, when he turns 18 and discovers that he’s been living a lie. Taken to live with his well-meaning but stressed-out aunt Sue (Lisa McGrillis) and cousin Aaron (Samuel Bottomley), he must come to terms with a new world he never knew existed. 

But even as he’s introduced to the world for the very first time, Danny must embark on an important quest: to find the real monster that killed his mother.

As the drama follows Danny throughout three different stages of his life, we’ll get to see three equally captivating performances.

TV newcomer Samuel McKenna stars as seven-year-old Danny, while Austin Haynes, who has starred in The A Word, Gentleman Jack, All Creatures Great And Small and Dodger And The Railway Children Return, will portray 13-year-old Danny.

Eighteen-year-old Danny, meanwhile, is played by Lewis Gribben, who rose to prominence in 2017’s T2 Trainspotting and TV dramas Deadwater Fell, Silent Witness and Shetland. 

Elsewhere, Steve is played by Rory Keenan, who is best known for his roles in Peaky Blinders, War & Peace, Striking Out, Versailles, The Duchess and Rules Of The Game. 

Danny’s aunt Sue is played by Lisa McGrillis, who has starred in Hebburn, Inspector George Gently, No Offence, Mum, and King Gary, while Aaron is played by Samuel Bottomley, best known for Wolf Hall, Jericho, Ackley Bridge, The Teacher and Ladhood.

The series is produced by Clerkenwell Films, the makers of the Bafta award-winning Channel 4 shows The End Of The F***ing World and Misfits.

Excitingly, Stylist can today reveal an exclusive clip from the upcoming series.

In the clip, we see adult Danny watching a classic film in a dark house. Steve, meanwhile, has driven to a nearby phone box to make a call to Sue, who is anxiously pleading with him to talk to her for a little while.

“So you’ll come in the morning, yeah?” he tells Sue. “Come in carefully, OK,” he says before hanging up. 

After he drives home to the family’s remote house and parks the car on the driveway, he pulls on a helmet and takes a shotgun from the boot.

Upon entering the house, Steve finds Danny asleep on the sofa and lays the gun down on the coffee table. He wakes Danny up and tells him to go to bed as they have a “busy day tomorrow”. In the last few seconds of the clip, where we see the house surrounded by a dense forest, a deafening gunshot rings out across the land. 

Somewhere Boy airs on Channel 4 on Sunday 16 October at 10pm, with all episodes also available to stream on All 4.

Images: Channel 4