Coma review: A sweatily entertaining drama which takes sadistic delight in putting Jason Watkins through the wringer - shame about the last half-hour

How the Germans managed to distil 'taking pleasure in another person's misfortune' into a 13-letter word that's a pleasure to say is a mystery for another day.

The mystery with Coma is how three hours of watching Jason Watkins being put through the wringer – emotionally and physically – could peter out in such a pedestrian way.

Watkins plays Simon Henderson, an everyman struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, the threat of redundancy and the not-unreasonable feeling that every young person in a hoodie might have it in for him.

A run-in with Jordan Franklin – one of the menacing hoodies which hang round Simon's 'ends' – is the first light tug on Simon's nerve endings.

Jordan then pitches up outside the house Simon shares with wife Beth (Outnumbered's Claire Skinner) and asthmatic daughter Sophie.

The young thug threatens Simon, and before you know it, our everyman has snapped and the tracksuited tearaway is lying comatose on the asphalt.

From that first rush-of-blood moment, the rest of Coma gleefully ratchets up the tension for Simon as he meets Jordan's dad, local gangster Paul (Jonas Armstrong), whose main mission in life is catching the person who put his son in a hospital bed.

Armstrong – who seems to be a permanent member of the Channel 5 drama repertory company – plays Paul with nerve-bulging intensity, seemingly torn between gratitude to Simon for 'saving' his son with CPR and a burgeoning suspicions of his jittery personality.

Watkins, meanwhile, is terrific as the everyman beaten up by life and seemingly unable to fight back.

His twitchy, fearful Simon goes through agonies as his neighbour – seemingly senile Harry (David Bradley) – drops hints about knowing what Simon did, the police just won't leave him alone, and secrets pile up on secrets.

It's a delight watching him go through it all – that schadenfreude kicking in at every turn – as newspaper headlines proclaim Simon a hero, the CCTV he must somehow erase, the way Paul involves him in the hunt for his Jordan's assailant.

There's some good lines too. DS Kelly Evans (Kayla Meikle) tells Simon that bad boy Jordan is known to the police: “We've had mugshots of him since he was nine years old. It's the nearest thing he's got to a school photo.”

And each episode ends with a cliffhanger which carefully escalates the tension without seeming too outlandish.

Which would make Coma a terrific watch, having you squirming in your seat for three hours, relieved that Simon's going through all this, not you, while also leaving you pondering what you would do in Simon's place.

Unfortunately, the last half-hour can't cash the cheques the previous three episodes have written, and all the loose ends get tied up rather too neatly with no one really getting their just desserts.

Least of all Jordan, played with a nasty smirk by Joe Barber, who seems to be having all sorts of fun as the walking ASBO who terrorises poor Simon.

He's the sort of person who you suspect would never learn any kind of lesson that isn't accompanied by a punch in the guts, so his tame turnaround comes as something of a surprise.

However, despite that last half-hour, Coma is a sweatily entertaining watch that kept you hooked – even if it was just to think 'rather him than me'.