Paranoid, ITV: cast, locations, and three other things you need to know about the murder thriller

While Channel 4 are bringing real-life thrills to the screen in Hunted, ITV have a new fictional thriller to spice up Thursday nights.

Paranoid offers up a shocking murder in its opening minutes – and the cast tease that the show will surprise viewers across the eight episodes.

Here are five things you need to know.

1) It’s from the creator of Lark Rise to Candleford

Paranoid comes from writer and producer Bill Gallaher – and while he’s the mind behind period dramas like Lark Rise to Candleford and The Paradise, this is a totally different affair.

Swap bonnets and a cosy Sunday night tone for a gritty murder, and a group of detectives determined to catch the killer.

2) It stars Game of Thrones’ Indira Varma

Game of Thrones’ Ellaria Sand, aka Indira Varma, takes the lead role in Paranoid as Nina Suresh – a 38 year-old detective who’s bubbly and quick-witted when she wants to be, but is also struggling with a recent break up and grappling with her desire to have children while she still can.

Varma says the characters in the show made her want to take part.

“I'm not usually a massive fan of procedural dramas,” she admitted. “Despite now playing a cop in a conspiracy thriller, Paranoid feels very character driven, which is what appeals to me as an actor. Having an emotional roller coaster to ride.”

Robert Glenister also takes a starring role, ahead of his young brother Philip’s appearance in ITV’s other forthcoming crime thriller The Level.

He plays detective Bobby Day, who suffers from panic attacks and holds the potential for “a ferocious anger”.

3) It hinges on a shocking crime

Paranoid wastes no time in setting up its central mystery – but it’s not like most other crime drama set-ups.

Forget shady dealings and night-time trysts – the killing at the centre of Paranoid takes place in broad daylight, as a woman is murdered in front of several witnesses at a children’s playground by a hooded man.

“There’s nowhere you should feel safer than a children’s playground,” says producer Tom Sherry.

“We very deliberately picked the most idyllic setting, a landscape that was not urban or suburban but a rural idyll.”

4) It’s not a straight-forward detective show

From the start, Paranoid looks set to be a relatively straight-forward murder investigation drama – but the cast say there’s major turns in it.

“Paranoid starts off as a generic police procedural and then develops into something else,” Glenister teases.

“You start thinking, ‘Is this going to be about small town cops investigating a brutal murder? Or is it going to be something more than that?’ And it turns out to be something far more than that.

“It goes across to Germany and there is an American influence. The appeal was the scale of it. Something that starts off quite parochial and small then becomes global.”

5) It was filmed in Cheshire and Dusseldorf

The show is largely set in Cheshire – and that’s where it was filmed, in rural areas including Nantwich, Great Budworth, and Delamere Forest.