The guardian have posted one of the first reviews of Runaway.. read below. Clips and captures of last nights episode will be up soon too!

It was quite a relief to turn to the explicit violence of the adaptation of Martina Cole’s bestseller The Runaway (Sky1), set in Cole’s preferred 1960s East End milieu. Kathy is the daughter of Madge, a good-time girl-come-prostitute, who takes up with Eamon. Eamon has a son called Eamon. Kathy and Eamon II grow up together and fall – necessarily secretly, what with the statutory definition of incest being quite far from the working one round them parts – in love.

Eamon II gradually wanders into the gangster hinterlands and, after he shoots a man beating up his friend, is taken up by the local Mr Big. Kathy, meanwhile, kills the man beating up her mother and is taken up by the police. The detective in charge tells Kathy to say she was raped by her victim, and, helpfully, bruises her thighs to support her story – and then frames Madge for the murder. It’s a world of limited choices and bleak prospects – a furious EastEnders with a genuinely hard edge.

It’s all brilliantly, brutally done. The script is workmanlike – the plot’s the thing – but the wonderful cast (including Keith Allen as the hardman, Kierston Wareing as Madge, and with the likes of Alan Cumming and Ken Stott still to come) punches well above its weight. Like any bloodied masochist in the ring, you know you’ll be coming back next week for more of the same.

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