Antonia Bernath

Never a martyr to originality, ITV rolled out their latest spooky drama Trinity that is part Lost, part Codename Icarus and part any US college-set comedy-drama that goes straight to DVD, and then straight to the charity shop, and then straight to recycling when the DVD is taking up space that could be used for a DVD that has a better chance of selling, such as Bobby Davro's Rock With Laughter or Fred West Sings Sinatra.

The young characters in Trinity can be summed-up in a few words - Dorian (likes sex, preferably incest, but will settle for virgins; very arrogant); Charlotte (feisty Christian, easily corrupted); Rosalind (loves sex, hates love); Theo (poor but bright, likes sex); Angus (moron, stoned); Raj (stoned, moron). The last two are supposed to offer comic relief through their tripped-out dialogue and drug taking but are perhaps the most egregious screen presences since Scrappy Doo.

There's a temptation to write-off the first episode as an excruciating and clumsy introduction. The first reason is that the truly atrocious scene in which distressed virgin (her father died recently, as never tires of telling anyone) Charlotte (Antonia Bernath) is seduced by the predatory Dorian. After revelling in the joys of sex for the first time, Charlotte suddenly appears as though she's just read the Karma sutra in the 15 seconds it's taken for Dorian to get his end away and is lustful for more. That is until she spots the cross dangling from her neck, and is suddenly tormented by a religious guilt that swamps very pore of her soul prompting her to lambast Dorian for taking advantage of her (and in so doing causing Dorian's face to break out in an emotion that isn't arrogance or scorn for the first time in his life).

The second reason is that away from the debauchery, that is as calculating a sensual device to lure in the casual viewer as a half-naked woman is in a video by the offensively crap All-American Rejects, there is a sinister beguiling plot handled deftly by Charles Dance as the sharp, menacing Dr Edmund Maltravers, the Dean of Trinity, and Claire Skinner as the sympathetic Dr Angela Donne concerning some mysterious experiment or research being conducted at the university.

Of course, we don't know what it is yet, and are unlikely to ever know - as Trinity will probably be hacked to death by the ITV cost-cutting monster that lurks under the bed of every creative thought in independent television - but we can only hope that whatever the devious plan is that it involves the gradual elimination of every single student in Trinity - that by itself would win it a Bafta for Most Satisfying Drama Series.

The Custard TV, 26th September 2009

ITV2 is not interested in family audiences. It just wants the under-34s. Last night it aimed for them with a comedy drama that predicts or recalls the terror of your first term at university. The eponymous Oxbridge-style college in Trinity contains plenty to be scared of. It is run by a sinister snob played with lethal silkiness by Charles Dance who keeps a troll-like boffin called Linus working on a secret necromancy project. Scarier than them, however, are the students, hoorays whose eccentricities stretch from hooting at jokes in Latin to having sex with their cousins. In the opener's best scene, Trinity's version of the Bullingdon Club hold a Feast of Fools in which two gullible proles are volunteered to prance around the party in their underpants as court jesters under the impression that this is a good way to meet girls.

Into this madhouse arrive the pleb freshers Theo (Reggie Yates), who is not averse to finding a way into some posh knickers, Maddy (Elen Rhys), who is daffy and Welsh, and Charlotte (Antonia Bernath) who is a Christian but otherwise normal and whose father has just been killed. The characters are well drawn, the plot is ingenious, the sex is raunchy and the look is opulent. But Trinity has about half as many jokes as it needs. If ever a script needed punching up, it was this one.

Andrew Billen, The Times, 21st September 2009

It would help if Trinity knew what it wanted to be: teenage drama, Gothic murder mystery or a comedy about class. But the mix of genres does this eight-part series no favours. Yes, it looks sexy and stars Charles Dance, but the script is woeful and the concept desperately cliched. The setting is an exclusive university which prides itself on being for the rich and powerful. Until now, that is: at the behest of the new warden, Dr Angela Doone (Claire Skinner), Trinity has opened its doors to all classes and incomes. Among the new arrivals is Charlotte (Antonia Bernath), whose father was a don at Trinity but who died in mysterious circumstances related to the university's dark secret, one overseen by Dr Edmund Maltravers (Dance), the snobbish and devious dean.

The Telegraph, 20th September 2009