Dead Hot review – it’s Skins meets Queer As Folk … but way weirder

Charlotte Coben’s zany thriller about a missing man who left a severed finger behind has plenty of whiplash-inducing twists. She’s clearly cut from the same cloth as her dad Harlan

Dead Hot comes pre-loaded with charisma. Its leads, Vivian Oparah from Rye Lane, and Bilal Hasna, last seen in the underrated Extraordinary, sparkle their way through their scenes, lighting up what might otherwise have been a humdrum mystery. I say mystery, but it’s also a comedy-thriller-horror-romance. There is a lot going on. It has been created and written by Charlotte Coben, daughter of Harlan, who is clearly cut from the family cloth, so expect plenty of whiplash-inducing twists. However, it doesn’t quite manage to assemble its components into something more solid and palpable.

Hasna is Elliott, who we meet five years after a traumatic and life-changing event – the disappearance of his lover, Peter (Big Boys’ Olisa Odele), in mysterious and gruesome circumstances. Elliott arrived home one day to find Peter’s severed finger in a pool of blood, and Peter has not been seen since. In the present day, Elliott lives with Jess (Oparah), Peter’s twin sister, who has not entirely given up on Peter still being alive. She downloads and deletes a DNA-matching app, presumably in the hope that, in his absence, Peter will have been thinking, I’ve always wondered if I’ve got a fifth cousin twice removed in Australia, and sent off a swab to find out.

Dead Hot is on Prime Video now