IT is a gripping, tense, shocking BBC One drama, which hopes to transfix the viewing nation on Sunday night. And The Cry will be shown in the same timeslot as the hit Bodyguard.

It is dramas like these which has TV viewers going back to the tradition of waiting for the prime-time show to come on rather than watching box sets in their own time.

The four-part Scottish-Australia drama, based on the novel by Helen Fitzgerald and produced by a small Glasgow production company, Synchronicity Films, hopes to prove the point that Scotland can produce its own mainstream, international-quality TV drama.

Shot in Melbourne and Victoria, as well as the West End of Glasgow, the expensive high-end drama has had its rights sold to broadcasters around the world.

The Cry, a story told in a “complex, non-linear” fashion, revolves around a couple and a terrible incident that affects their young family in Australia, with Joanna played by Doctor Who and Emmerdale star Jenna Coleman and husband Alistair, played by Ewen Leslie.

For Synchronicity, a small team based in an unassuming office in the Finnieston area of Glasgow, it has been a dramatic year: the drama was commissioned by the BBC last August, and 2018 has been a whirlwind of location scouting, casting and shooting. Claire Mundell, who runs Synchronicity Films, said she will celebrate on Sunday night at 9pm when the first episode is transmitted, but may hold off reading the instant reviews on social media until Monday morning.

Ms Mundell said she is well aware of the significance of the 9pm Sunday slot on BBC One. Bodyguard drew more than 10m viewers to its first episode.

Ms Mundell said: “I am thrilled, excited, proud, terrified and curious to see what the reaction is.”