What I'm Watching: "Thirteen"

Meet my current television obsession: BBC Three's intoxicating thriller Thirteen (which will make its American debut on BBC America on June 23), about a woman (Jody Comer) who was kidnapped as a girl and who has spent 13 years as a prisoner before escaping and being reunited with her family. It's sort of Room crossed with Stockholm, Pennsylvania, but it's different than both of those similarly themed films. Over five episodes, Ivy Moxam must re-acclimate to life on the outside while getting to know the family that she lost 13 years ago, all of whom have been irrevocably changed as a result of her disappearance. But there's also a ticking clock element to this story as Ivy's kidnapper has taken another girl...

The result is a show so tense that I'm on tenterhooks easily four times a minute and the final episode is a breathless, taut race to the finish. Comer (so completely different here to her performance as Chloe on My Mad Fat Diary) is outstanding as Ivy. Extraordinary.