With his partner moving out after ten years and his radio spot facing the axe thanks to his unreliability, talk show host Gabriel Noone craves a friendly voice in his life.

This bizarrely comes courtesy of a 14-year-old boy who has sent Gabriel's publisher friend a manuscript detailing unimaginable cruelty and sexual abuse as a victim of paedophiles.

Precocious yet open and warm hearted, young Pete (Culkin) is soon conducting regular long-distance conversations between his Wisconsin home and Gabriel in New York.

It transpires he was adopted after his rescue by his social worker Donna (Collette) and his life is tempered with the knowledge he carries the HIV virus as a legacy of his abuse.

With the old constants of his life removed, Gabriel finds his life centring round these occasional calls...until his trust is shattered with the observation that Pete and Donna's voices are uncannily similar.

This is a slow-burning thriller which takes its time to allow Gabriel to build up a level of obsession with the truth that compels him to head out east to see for himself.

Williams bestows his character with a warmth threatened by a creeping loneliness that has him desperate to believe what he's been told about Pete.

There are no sudden shocks or creaking stairs….just a gradual build-up of unease which soons become dread as Gabriel gets closer to the truth.

Based on real events in writer Amistead Maupin's life, what appears a quiet, unassuming affair soon exerts a grip like a vice.

Worth tuning in for.

Tim Evans