Table of contents for Crime Scene UK 0002 in Crime Scene

Which is Swedish for ‘welcome’, in honour of issue 2, our Scandinavian special. Icy brutality, dysfunctional detectives and blacker than black humour has helped make Nordic Noir some of the ‘hottest’ crime shows around. We’re lucky enough this issue to have ventured on set of WALLANDER series 4, hung out with the gorgeous Sofia Helin from THE BRIDGE series 3 and nabbed an exclusive chat with the writer of new Icelandic drama TRAPPED, while BORGEN producer Camilla Hammerich has written for Crime Scene exclusively on the power of Birgitte Nyborg. We also visited the sets of SHERLOCK: THE ABONIMABLE BRIDE and FARGO, got gritty with LUTHER and investigated the protoype of the modern detective story – this plus all the usual news, previews and reviews. I hope you like the…

A crime-solving partnership between one of the most famous writers and the most famous illusionist of the early 20th century sounds like the stuff of TV magic, but the show’s premise is based in fact. Sort of. Arthur Conan Doyle really did have a penchant for police work. He got involved in two cases, taking it upon himself to interview suspects and examine crime scenes. His work led to the exoneration of George Edalji, who was accused of maiming horses in 1903, and also of Oscar Slater, who was convicted of murdering an elderly woman in 1908. His fame probably helped as much as his investigative skills – it was assumed he was as logical and brilliant as his fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. Houdini, meanwhile, was reportedly involved in espionage.…

What are your crime inspirations? I’m a detective fiction fan and I watch a lot of stuff too. What I wanted to do was draw a guy who believes in right and wrong. That was important. It sounds simplistic and is almost outdated in some ways. In that sense the James Lee Burke novels were a big inspiration. Does Harry solve different cases each week, or is there a serialised arc? Both actually. This is something that we wanted to make sure that audiences could come in and watch whenever they want. Obviously the bracelet and the luck forms one of the big serial arcs, and yet at the same time we see Harry as a detective solving crimes. There is a crime of the week for eight episodes, and…

In 2013, according to the FBI, there were 8,454 gun homicides in the United States, which roughly equates to one lethal shooting per hour. Guns are far and away our most popular method of killing each other. No other weapon or technique even comes close. The same year, there were 1,490 murders committed with knives, and 428 with blunt objects. Americans beat each other to death with their bare hands 687 times. But in that span, there were only eleven fatal, intentional poisonings. In 2013, Americans were 8.5 times as likely to be burned alive as to be brought down with poison – the FBI found 94 killings in which the murder weapon was listed as “fire.” It wasn't always so safe to eat with your extended family, or to…

What was it like, returning to CSI and the character of Grissom for the final episode? It was a really great experience. After the show was cancelled, CBS said ‘Would you guys want to come back and do a finale?’ And, of course, everybody wanted to. I hadn’t been on the show for seven years but the great thing about CSI was we were always best friends – I stayed in touch with people after I was off the show – but it’s different when you get to go back and play the same characters again together. Was it hard to get back into the character after so much time away from the show? It was like falling off a log, quite frankly. As soon I…

What’s the very first crime story or novel you ever remember reading? I’m sure it was a Sherlock Holmes story, maybe ‘The Adventure Of The Speckled Band’. It was a very intriguing detective and a cool crime. The mysteries I first remember reading are Arthur Conan Doyle’s and Agatha Christie’s. I liked the twists and turns, the red herrings, how the plots worked out – quite compelling. What’s your favourite crime novel ever and why? It’s probably going to be Strangers On A Train by Patricia Highsmith or The Body Farm by Patricia Cornwell. I’ve gone back and read those a couple of times and the building of suspense is just undeniable. Highsmith had some issues, but it was maybe the catalyst for the work that she did. The Silence…

“I just think a lot of people have the wrong impression of me,” she tells Crime Scene. “They confuse me with characters in my books...” Britain’s biggest crime writer used to have a simple tagline on her books: the person who tells it like it really is. Martina Cole in an interview is just as no-nonsense as her hard-hitting novels about gangland families in Essex and London. Within two minutes, she’s taking us to task for asking why she writes about criminals and not cops. “I hope you’re not going to write a negative piece,” she says sharply. Fortunately, there are plenty of positives to dwell upon in Cole’s astonishing 23-year career, with sales of more than 15 million making her the biggest-selling hardback adult fiction novelist in the UK.…

THE AUTHOR Barbra Leslie studied film and theatre at York University, then English at the University of Toronto. She has previously published a novel, Nerve, and a screenplay for straightedge films. She’s been a marketing manager for a major Bay Street law firm, criminal law issues officer for a government ministry, and travelled extensively around the world. Barbra now lives in Toronto, Canada. She tweets as@barbrajleslie. Former personal trainer and recent divorcee Danny is emerging from a two day crack bender when she gets a voicemail from Fred, her twin sister Ginger’s husband. Ginger is dead… All I can say is, if it didn’t feel like a choir of angels all of a sudden bursting into the room and whispering into your ears, I wouldn’t do it. Taking a hit…

John McNamara’s “event series” sets its agenda with a montage of era-specific songs and scenes. It’s a busy pitch – and it gets busier. A kind of composite histori-crime guide to Los Angeles in 1967, from Black Panthers to cults, Aquarius never quite nails its precinct. One focus falls on Charles Manson (Gethin Anthony) and his ‘Family’, the others on crime-of-the-week cases featuring LAPD cops Sam Hodiak (David Duchovny) and Brian Shafe (Grey Damon), who take down hippies in undercover deadbeat drag. If the fact/fiction blur isn’t a big issue, then the messy plotting is. Watchable at times, Aquarius is also hard to swallow. A playful Duchovny brings the fun but rarely convinces as a violent cop who is battling his own demons. Anthony is better as a man who…

The Following, like many shows before it, started out strong with a creepy, nasty little idea that rapidly diminished in returns with two subsequent seasons. After debuting with the concept of frazzled FBI agent, Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) on the trail of a charismatic serial killer, Joe Carroll (known scenery-chewer, James Purefoy) who inspired random acts of murder by acolytes; the second go-around saw Carroll escape from prison for a do-over before being put back in the clink. Season 3 opens a year on with Carroll now on death row, Hardy improbably loved up and the FBI under fire... until new murderers start indiscriminately and inventively slaying. They’re linked back to season 2 weirdo Mark and provide a new leader, Theo (Michael Ealy, decent). But with the entertaining Hardy/Carroll bromance…

The third season of Bryan Fuller’s lavish Hannibal Lecter reimagining may be its last but it’s an immensely rewarding final course that plays out in two distinct parts – the first finds Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) on the hunt for Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen), who has fled to Florence, while the second adapts original Lecter novel Red Dragon, with a terrifying, toothy turn from Richard Armitage. In a break from the format of previous seasons, it switches killer-of-the-week cases for a pair of manhunts, but proves to be a far richer viewing experience for the show’s dedicated ‘fannibals’. As ever the relationship between Hannibal and Will is at the heart of the dark and twisted drama, almost to the point that major supporting characters feel sidelined, and it plays on expectations…

When Lazarus & Dingwall first aired in 1991, the main touchstones for spoof cop shows came from the States – most brilliantly and anarchically with Police Squad. There’s a lot of the silliness of that show at work in the script here but, while it put a Sweeney-style spin on the genre, focusing on two dopey undercover detectives in The Really Serious Crime Squad, the fact that it wasn’t recommissioned for a second series isn’t a massive surprise. While the titular coppers are played wonderfully straight by Mark Arden and Stephen Frost (The Oblivion Boys from The Young Ones), and the daft cases are unexpected (the murder of a stunt-bunny with Lionel Blair in the frame), the pace is clunky and dated and tends to leave the gags hanging. With…

A protagonist getting released from death row sounds like the upbeat finale to a legal drama. But in Rectify it’s the starting point for a powerful and nuanced psychological thriller set in the American South. Aden Young (I, Frankenstein) puts in a career-best performance as Daniel Holden, a man who has spent two decades in prison for raping and murdering his 16-year-old girlfriend – though whether or not he actually did the deed remains ambiguous. When new DNA evidence is discovered, Holden is freed, but not yet exonerated. It’s a precarious position for someone who’s already received a stay of execution five times. Holden’s return stirs up old secrets, lies and enmities – and his prosecutor is determined to send him back to death row. The prison flashbacks enrich this…

Serial – the podcast series that examined the 1999 murder of Baltimore teenager Hae Min Lee and the subsequent conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed – has now been downloaded over 70 million times. Inspiring listeners to investigate it themselves, spawning endless in-depth articles, unofficial spin-offs and high-profile spoofs, Serial not only won a prestigious Peabody Award – the first ever for a podcast – it raised enough interest in the cold case to see Syed granted an appeal, based on ineffective counsel, after serving 15 years of a life sentence. After what feels like an interminable wait since the series ended back in December last year, two more seasons will be aired in quick succession, the first of which will reportedly focus on Bowe Bergdahl, the US Army sergeant…

THE REALITY I give a lot of guest lectures at universities about what the reality is in terms of forensic identification, what we can and can’t do with bones and databases and stuff like that. The Turning Tide is not the glitzy CSI-style hot women running around flipping their glossy hair all over crime scenes – it’s a dismal mortuary in the Highlands staffed by two people. Not very much work comes through so when they do get something interesting or unusual they are unprepared for it. I’d seen a few dissections before I went to work at Sheffield, but I think Sheffield was the first fresh corpse. I did actually faint at my first one. It was somebody who had been in a road traffic accident, so he was…

Millennials get a bad rap. According to the stereotypes, they're all lazy, delusional perma-teens, obsessed with selfies and incapable of doing a hard day's work, right? Well, not according to New Blood. Written by novelist and Foyle’s War screenwriter Anthony Horowitz, the seven-episode BBC cop show will see two up-and-coming investigators, Stefan (Mark Strepan) and Rash (Ben Tavassoli), taking on the establishment, exposing corruption among the rich and powerful while struggling to get by in the world on their meagre rookie wages. “For a long time I've been wondering how to take a fresh approach to crime drama,” admits Horowitz, whose CV also includes Midsomer Murders as well as the latest James Bond novel Trigger Mortis. “I hope that with New Blood I’ve succeeded. This is a show about the…

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN Fans of Paula Hawkins’s novel might be annoyed to hear that the film – currently in production, starring Emily Blunt – has moved the action from London to New York. The author herself is unconcerned, though, saying the plot of her psychological thriller could take place in any commuter belt. And the film should be in safe hands, with The Help director Tate Taylor at the helm. THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB Super-hacker Lisbeth Salander is set to return in this reboot of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series (famously brought to the cinema screens in 2011’s Girl With The Dragon Tattoo). Rather than taking either of Larsson’s sequel novels as inspiration, it will be looking to the fourth book which was penned by David Lagercrantz…

Wrapped up in what looks like a customised Arctic sleeping bag-cum-coat, the runner approaches Crime Scene on a muddy track leading to a desolate, windswept field in remotest Sweden in the bleak midwinter. “Do you want to come and watch Wallander find a body in a ditch?” he asks. Clearly, we’ve come to the right place. Welcome to Wallander. We are on the set of BBC1’s immensely popular detective drama and the setting is suitably cheerless. As the rain sheets down, we are watching a pivotal scene from the final episode of the crime drama. The series is based on the late Henning Mankell’s cycle of novels, which have sold more than 40 million copies in 40 languages. The show, whose title character is played with brooding magnetism by Sir…

“I read it in a sitting and I just found it very moving, very compelling,” says director Lenny Abrahamson of author Emma Donoghue’s 2010 bestseller, Room. “And I really had this sense as I read it that I knew how to make it. I felt extremely passionate about it. So I just wrote this letter to Emma Donoghue. It was about 10 pages long, of how I felt you could make this into a film: what you shouldn’t do, as much as what I wanted to do. She liked the letter a lot, but at that point I’d only made Adam & Paul and Garage. She knew of them and really liked them, but I think her people around her thought, ‘He’s an arthouse filmmaker. Could he get this film…

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER... Emma Jones is a DS. She’s ambitious and incredibly professional, and very good at her job. She and Luther are forced into working together through a tragic accident, all due to a very unpleasant criminal. Luther takes her under his wing, and she very much looks up to him after that. IS SHE A GOOD FOIL FOR LUTHER? She’s more than a match for him. In my mind she has always been aware of the reputation that John Luther has – he’s a tortured soul and yet incredibly magnetic – but when she meets him he’s an exhausted man. She soon realises there’s raw passion under there, and an absolute genius, and as a result she has serious respect for him. Not necessarily…

1 THE LADYKILLER (1993) Cole’s second novel is a seedy revenge story. George Markham is consumed by the disturbing hobby he pursues in his shed, which ultimately leads to a depraved attack.DI Kate Burrows must team up with a mob hard man to catch the killer. 2 TWO WOMEN (1999) Female characters are as important as male gangsters in Cole’s novels. Two Women is a harrowing portrayal of domestic violence. When she snaps, Susan Dalston hits her husband 152 times with a hammer and ends up sharing a cell with a murderess. 3 MAURA’S GAME (2002) Maura Ryan was introduced in Cole’s debut novel, Dangerous Lady, and fans were thrilled when the character returned. It has all the elements of Cole’s East End sagas: violence, swearing and villains hatching schemes…

So key to the appeal of Breaking Bad is the character of Saul Goodman, it’s sometimes hard to remember that he didn’t appear until midway through the second season – and in an episode entitled ‘Better Call Saul’, no less. Like Jack Torrance at the Overlook Hotel, he’s somehow always been there. And now with this spin-off prequel (which, if it runs long enough, could even evolve into a new-fangled ‘side-quel’, concurrent with the events of Breaking Bad) his mythology is established long before unassuming teacher Walter White contracted cancer. The pressure of following up a huge hit must have weighed heavily on coshowrunners Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould who, like the Frasier creators before them, had to both honour the old show and make the new one stand alone.…

Not all detectives are hard-boiled types, taking on the forces of the criminal underworld. Chandler & Co, created by Paula Milne (The Politician’s Wife), stars Catherine Russell as Elly Chandler, a recent divorcee who starts working as a private investigator, assisted by her former sister-in-law, Dee Tate (Barbara Flynn). The show ran for two series in the mid-’90s and has languished in obscurity since. Given that the pair specialise in “marital and personal cases”, the first six episodes focus as much on the tough emotional consequences of their work, as the tracking of a succession of wayward husbands and lost daughters. Unfortunately this leads to a frankly unconvincing “willthey-won’t-they?” subplot between Elly and the pair’s technical adviser and exasperated mentor, Larry Blakeston – an otherwise excellent Peter Capaldi. You wouldn’t…

Some European crime shows instantly establish the distinctiveness of their protagonists and setting, but that’s not the case with Italian drama Fog And Crimes, which takes a more understated approach – perhaps the reason it has not made the mark in the UK of some of its more audacious and unusual TV bedfellows. Tenacious Italian police inspector Franco Soneri (Luca Barbareschi) has some of the customary Euro-gloominess we’re attuned to (learning – for instance – after his wife’s death that she did not love him) and takes his time to track down a variety of murderers while romancing an attractive lawyer and demonstrating a certain sympathy for the victims – and no particular proficiency at dealing with the violence of his job. Everything is efficiently done, but it has to…

It was inevitable that the influence of bleak Nordic TV dramas like The Killing and The Bridge would seep into British productions and, indeed, From Darkness proves to be a fascinating hybrid of the darkness of those hit Scandinavian series with the tortured interpersonal relationships of the successful first series of ITV’s Broadchurch. Anne-Marie Duff plays Claire Church, a former cop who left the force following her failure to hunt down a murderer of prostitutes in Manchester. She now lives with her family in isolation on a remote Scottish island – cue endless shots of waves breaking on the shore, grey landscapes and repetitive close-ups of Claire’s inner torment and sad, expressive eyes. When the killer appears to have struck again, all these years later, she’s drawn back into the…

Whatever the title might suggest, writer Stephen Bill’s six-part BBC drama from 1997 rarely finds the right key for its plot points. The main selling point is a pre-The Lakes John Simm as Paul, a heroin-addict housebreaker who leaves Sheila Kelley’s Carla comatose when she catches him red-handed. Paul does a runner but doesn’t reckon on encountering Roland (Warren Clarke), Carla’s estranged husband. A locksmith who also needs to fix his family life (he’s estranged from his hippie daughter too), Roland sets a trap for Carla’s assailant – and the half-baked plan produces overwrought results for all involved. “I’m a mess, Rollo,” says Carla, but the script is messier. Even before twists involving dismembered dogs, break-ins via JCB, druggie clichés and a dash of vigilante justice, The Locksmith mistakes complications…

Adapted since 2011 from the novels by Ann Cleeves, Vera follows the investigations of Vera Stanhope, a world-weary Detective Chief Inspector with the fictional Northumberland & City Police. She’s like a female Jack Frost – forthright and shabby, but with heaps of local knowledge, a kind heart, and the wisdom of a long career. The series looks beautiful. The grey gloom of northern suburbia is punctuated by lingering vistas of the sunlit English coast, low clouds over rolling farmland. There are 20 episodes, each 90 minutes long, and Brenda Blethyn is reliable as the core of the show, delivering a thoughtful and likeable performance. Alas, the fifth series is less engaging: a new character, Aiden, replaces her sidekick Joe and there are fewer glimpses into their life outside work. Partly…

Publishers seem to go weak at the knees for domestic noir and Scandinavian crime fiction at the moment, but it’s refreshing to see Gwen Parrott’s DEAD WHITE (Pageturners, out now) translated from… Welsh! Set during the big snowstorms of 1947, it’s full of post-war charm, pre-war morals, and plenty of rural mystery for schoolteacher Della Arthur. Another fascinating translation is that of SYNDROME E, by the French author Franck Thilliez (Penguin, out now). It’s about a film cut with subliminal images, which somehow makes detective Lucie Henebelle’s boyfriend lose his sight. Soon, others connected to the strange 1950s flick start turning up dead and Lucie works with profiler Franck Sharko to catch the killer. Luca Veste’s BLOOD STREAM (Simon & Schuster, out now) brings us bang up to date with…

There are few things more popular right now than crime fiction and live action superheroics, so it was only a matter of time before someone combined the two. What you might not have predicted is that “someone” would be comic supremo Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man, the X-Men and most of Marvel’s big hitters. Lee dreamt up the idea for Stan Lee’s Lucky Man – a 10 episode Sky 1 crime series in which James Nesbitt’s down on his luck detective Harry Clayton captures crims with the assistance of a mystical bracelet that leaves nothing to chance. “All crime shows have something similar at their base about catching someone who’s done something wrong.” Nesbitt tells Crime Scene. “Where ours is interesting is the way that the bracelet is used, so…

1. THE WIDOW BY FIONA BARTON From the publisher that brought you The Girl On The Train, buzz is already building for this book that centres on the question of how well we can ever really know our partners. A loving husband or a heartless killer? Jean would know... wouldn’t she? Published in January. 2. FEVER CITY BY TIM BAKER Violent, vivid and visceral, this book is a high-octane, nightmare journey through the glamour of Mad Men-era America. It’s a tale of dark powers, corruption and conspiracy featuring a cast of brilliantly complex and flawed characters. Published in January. 3. THE CROW GIRL BY ERIK AXL SUND Already a huge success across Europe, this terrifying book about a spate of vicious murders is not for the fainthearted. Plot twists will…

It started with Lovehead, in 1974. Jackie Collins’ fourth novel (renamed The Love Killers for the US market) was her first to focus its plot – a feminist is assassinated by the gangster whose prostitutes she has inspired to go on strike: cue erotic revenge strategies – on the Mafia, making plain that beneath the glamour and chafe-making levels of sex on offer, Collins was, at heart, a crime writer. The timing was no coincidence; five years earlier, Mario Puzo had published The Godfather, the bestseller Collins always admitted was “my favourite book of all time.” She told Elle, “I was one of the first people to read it – I asked the publisher to get it for me in proof form and I thought, ‘This is fantastic!’ It was…

“I love the scene in which Saga has been persuaded by Martin that in order to interact more normally with her colleagues at the police station, she must try – for the first time – some small talk. So she sits down with her embarrassed fellow officers and brightly says, “I started my period today!” “I’m pleased with the scene where she forces herself to talk about the tragedies in her past involving the death of her sister – something she is deeply uncomfortable doing. As an actress, I usually have to keep Saga within certain parameters, but here I was able to take her out of her comfort zone.” “I like the effect of the scene that is the climax of the first season – avoiding spoilers, we’re on…

CONTAINS SERIES 4 SPOILERS What made you want to write a final Wallander novel? I believe that if you tell a story, whether it is a written story or a film, you tell a story that comes to an end. Wallander has many chapters – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven TV shows or movies – and I felt that the end had come. One out of three people in Europe will get Alzheimer’s, and I thought, why can’t Wallander get Alzheimer’s? I realised that that was the only thing in relation to being old and dying that scares me; to be physically fit but realise that my mind is leaving me. I thought, why don’t I use the fact that this scares me so…

In April 1841, American horror maestro Edgar Allen Poe published a story in Graham’s Magazine that, one way or another, is the reason you’re reading this article. Originally titled ‘The Murders In The Rue Trianon’, ‘Rue Morgue’ is what Poe termed a “tale of ratiocination” (from the French for “reasoning”) and introduces Parisian sleuth Auguste Dupin as he solves “a horrible mystery” to which there is not “the slightest clew”. Just 19 pages long, and modest in all but Dupin’s dazzling deductions, it represents detective fiction’s Year Zero, and would inspire writers from Arthur Conan Doyle to Agatha Christie. Though no stranger to the abyss, Poe wasn’t writing in a vacuum. Voltaire’s Zadig (1747) and ETA Hoffmann’s Mademoiselle de Scudéri (1819) laid the groundwork for the genre, and many (TS…

Cluedo The classic whodunit, players will have to fight to be the first to figure out which of the assembled characters killed poor old Dr Black. Was it Professor Plum in the study with the candlestick? Or Miss Scarlet in the library with the revolver? Master detectives will learn to keep track of who’s shown whom a card in response to which suggestion, and making deductions from there. FOR 2–6 PLAYERS AGES 8 AND UP Sleuth If all these murder mysteries are starting to sound a bit gruesome, Sleuth might be more your speed. It’s a deductive card game where players need to figure out which precious gem has been stolen by questioning other players on the cards they’ve got in their hand. Kind of like Happy Families, but with…

30 MARCH 1959 The youngest of five children, Eilidh Martina Cole is born in Essex to Irish parents, a merchant seaman and a psychiatric nurse. 1978 By 18, Cole is pregnant with her first child. Expelled from her school and divorced at 17, she takes on various low-paying jobs. 6 AUGUST 1992 After being discovered by agent Darley Anderson and signing a £150,000 deal, Dangerous Lady is published by Headline. 23 MAY 1995 Cole’s first TV adaptation airs on ITV. The four-part Dangerous Lady stars Jason Isaacs in the story about a family of gangsters. 17 JUNE 2009 An adaptation of The Take, featuring an acclaimed performance by Tom Hardy, is screened on Sky 1. The Runaway follows in March 2011. NOVEMBER 2011 As her 18th novel The Faithless is…

Before Kurt Wallander, there was Martin Beck. Having first appeared in the 1965 novel Roseanna, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Beck went on to become the most influential fictional detective in his native Sweden. There have been various adaptations with Peter Haber making the role his own in 30 films over 18 years, yet this is the first UK DVD release, following BBC Four’s broadcast of the fifth series. Confusingly, it’s billed as Beck The Series: Volume 1. It gets more baffling when the characters visibly age following the feature-length opener. In fact, ‘Buried Alive’ is from the previous run in 2010, and it’s Beck at its brutal best. There’s a chilling scene in a car wash, a grim discovery by a child in a sandpit and a fateful…

It seems fitting that Lewis has come to an end after 33 episodes. It’s the exact number of episodes that its respected forerunner, Inspector Morse, ran for. We had expected the series to end before now. Indeed Inspector Robbie Lewis (played by Kevin Whately) retired from the Oxford police at the end of the 2013 run. But then last year Robbie found himself back as a consultant, aiding a promoted Hathaway. This year we had three more stories, each split into two hour-long parts. And these six episodes are definitely the swansong. They’re marked by ongoing arcs in the heroes’ personal lives. Hathaway’s father is ill with Alzheimer’s and is declining fast; meanwhile Lewis and partner Dr Laura Hobson are planning a long trip to New Zealand, which he secretly…

It was never fashionable, never won any major awards and its theme tune was jauntily awful. Yet, despite these handicaps, New Tricks was that rarest of TV beasts: a ratings banker that, even as it went out with more of a whimper than a bang after its cancellation, still attracted audiences of more than five million. So what was it about a show centred on a team of retired plods investigating cold cases that held such a sizeable chunk of the nation’s attention? In truth, the 10 episodes of Series 12, the last hurrah, may not be the best place to look for clues. That’s because while the first two episodes feature Dennis Waterman (the last member of the original cast), Amanda Redman, Alun Armstrong and James Bolam are all…

Detective Inspector John River (Stellan Skarsgård) has an amazing partner. Smart and capable with a wicked sense of humour, Stevie (Nicola Walker) understands his eccentricities better than anyone he’s ever known. Now he’s dealing with one of the trickiest cases of his career, she’s the only one he can really talk to about it. Trouble is, she’s dead and it’s her murder he’s attempting to solve... Don’t assume Abi Morgan’s six-parter is a supernatural thriller, though. Stevie isn’t a ghost, she’s a ‘manifest’, a representation of River’s turmoil (and possible mental illness). And as difficult as the case might be, dealing with the emotional fallout will be even harder. River isn’t always an easy watch and fans of straightforward police procedurals might find themselves frustrated with the frequent tangents the…

Like reading a long crime novel, it takes a while to settle into Unforgotten’s rhythm. ITV’s cold case drama features several cross-cutting narratives, which normally indicates a fast-pace, but Unforgotten takes its time – a long time – to connect the threads. By the end of episode one, we’ve discovered less information than most CSI-style shows deliver before the opening credits. Considering this is a six-part series, that’s really quite astonishing. The slow pace might be off-putting if it weren’t for the stunning cast. The always exemplary Nicola Walker plays DCI Cassie Stuart, whose growing obsession with a cold case ( just how cold is part of the mystery – is the body dug up by builders five years old, or 5000?) discovered on her watch has subtle implications for…

“STRIKE AND ROBIN BOTH CONFRONT DARK MOMENTS FROM THEIR PASTS” CAREER OF EVIL BY ROBERT GALBRAITH (Sphere Books) Out Now After two finely wrought whodunits in her Robert Galbraith garb, JK Rowling turns her hand to that most hackneyed of concepts for Career Of Evil: the serial killer. And just as Stanley Kubrick ennobled the haunted-house horror in The Shining (with a little help from Stephen King’s source novel, of course), so Rowling rejuvenates the grim’n’grimy sub-genre, deftly discussing dismemberment and the decimation of London’s West End against a backdrop of the royal wedding, the only nod to her magical Harry Potter oeuvre her exceptional sleight of hand. Her nuptials imminent, detective’s assistant Robin Ellacott arrives at the office she shares with boss Cormoran Strike, signs for a package and…