Study of money and power in thriller threads is welcome guest

You start out thinking that the BBC's new thriller The Guest (BBC1, Mon, 9pm) could be an examination of the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots during our never-ending cost of living crisis.

- Philip Cunnington welcomes The Guest

A young woman is fired from her cleaning job for refusing to take a below minimum wage pay-cut, while a glossy woman swans around a mansion as her husband complains they are no clean cups.

So far, so Ken Loach, but The Guest quickly takes a sudden detour down twist-of-fate lane and the first episode ends in murder and mayhem avenue.

Ria, the penniless cleaner (Gabrielle Creevy), is spotted taking a packet from a local supermarket's food donation point and is immediately accosted by a security guard and accused of shoplifting.

Her logical response that it can't be shoplifting as it's already been paid for cuts no ice and she is ejected from the store, but fortunately the entire exchange has been witnessed by Fran (Eve Myles), the glossy woman with no coffee mugs.

Fran offers Ria a chance to win a cleaning job at her country mansion, and soon she is loaning her a dress and a chunky necklace and buying her sushi for lunch.