Our Girl, BBC One, review: A tough girl proves herself in a male-dominated world

Turner is an immensely likeable actress, but this first episode seemed over-reliant on her charisma

Molly Dawes, played by Lacey Turner (BBC )

The BBC first aired its feature-length army recruitment commercial Our Girl as a one-off drama in March of 2013, and the reception was good enough to justify the five-part series, which began last night (BBC1).

Lacey Turner (Stacey from EastEnders) plays army medic Molly Dawes, on her first deployment in Afghanistan. Turner is an immensely likeable actress, but this first episode seemed over-reliant on her charisma, to the detriment of other characters, like her new platoon-mate Smurf (Iwan Rheon from Game of Thrones).

Molly may once have been intimate with him “round the back of the Indian takeaway in Guildford” but that doesn’t mean she trusts him (given what he did to Theon Greyjoy, that seems wise). Happily, Dawes also had chemistry with her posh totty commanding officer Captain James (Ben Aldridge) despite his stern manner and her own protestations: “Maybe, I don’t want that Rupert to like me,” she grumbled.

The appeal of a tough girl proving herself in a male-dominated world should not be underestimated, but any credibility this series had was undermined by Dawes’s constant whimpering – would the British Army really let this liability loose in a war zone?