Hunting Alice Bell review: In the age of Brand and Walliams, this excellent drama is a timely thriller with something to say

While not quite covering the same ground as the Brand and Walliams cases, this new series created by comedian and writer David Baddiel and the Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw, highlights how women are often blamed for the evil that men do.

In this instance, the evil man is Dr Simon Nash (Simon Pegg), an anaesthetist and serial killer who has murdered 14 patients and left a young boy blind.

The Alice of the title is his accomplice – a young nurse who seemingly fell under Nash's spell and falsified records to give him an alibi.

While Nash serves his time in prison, Alice has been released and given a new identity to protect her from the mob which gathered outside the court for her sentencing.

Cut to years later, and the cosy family life of leisure centre manager Fran da Silva (Alexandra Roach) is turned upside down when assorted online 'truth-tellers', keyboard and true crime buffs out her as Alice.

Cue angry mobs, suspicious work colleagues and and a spiralling nightmare, as Alice finds herself under siege.

This week's first double bill was frighteningly convincing at illustrating how social media can fuel misinformation, hate and paranoia, helped along by a mysterious demagogue in a spiky mask called True Crime Buster, who seems to be the originator of the Fran is Alice rumours.

It all starts off low-key, as Fran tries to laugh off the Facebook comments, but it soon gets dark, as she is suspended from work, threatened with having her children taken away by social services and her house is firebombed.

But Fran is emboldened when she meets a group of four other women, all of whom have been accused of being Alice Bell – a woman who, in the dozen years or so since her conviction, has become the killer, with Nash, in a repellently oily performance by Pegg, having been trapped by her feminine wiles.

This recasting of the roles, and painting the woman as the Machiavellian schemer and the man as the poor innocent trapped in a web not of his own making, is becoming more familiar in the social media age, as online misogyny grows and grows and grows.

All of the five 'Alices' have faced rape threats, abuse and hate from the male keyboard warriors who enjoy pinning the blame on the woman.

Wrapped up in all this are conspiracy theories, homophobia and the idea that the truth has somehow become unimportant in the rush to be judgement.

It's a scattergun approach, but Hunting Alice Bell's main theme – the everyday misogyny faced by women, both in the real world and especially online – is handled well, single acts apparently not meaning much, but taken together gradually accrete into a feeling of intimidation and fear.

Meanwhile, it takes a while to work out timelines – at first glance, Fran couldn't possibly be Alice. Her children are too old, she looks nothing like the archive pictures.

But as these first two episodes play out, hints are dropped and clues are planted which put a pleasing element of doubt in your mind, not just about Fran, but about her fellow 'Alices' – Julie (Amanda Abbington), Vanessa (Emily Barber), Ros (Toni O'Rourke) and Charlotte (Christina Bennington).

The identity of the True Crime Buster is soon resolved too, and his motives are less than clear, but prison meeting with Dr Nash reveals further revelations which deepen the plot.

It's a good watch, and not without humour. Arranging a meeting with her four fellow 'Alices', Fran tells them: “We could go to the Angel and Griffin, that's always empty. They've got a one star hygiene rating but we could just have crisps?”

It works on a mystery-thriller, but Hunting Alice Bell also has something to say, and says it neatly, without ever forgetting this is supposed to be entertaining TV.

Let's hope the keyboard warriors are watching too.