Back in 2003, when Mick Herron was a humble sub-editor, his debut novel was published, the first of what became a four-volume series, the Zoë Boehm thrillers. Inevitably, after the success of his later Slow Horses series, television has snaffled this character up too. Morwenna Banks works on both series as a writer-producer. And it shows.Part of the fun of Down Cemetery Road is that it’s almost a distaff version of Slow Horses, with an atmospheric theme song with pertinent lyrics over the credits, Michelle Gurevich’s “Woman’s Touch”, great dialogue and a top-flight cast who know how to Read more ...

The problem with making TV dramas about unsolved real-life murder mysteries is that they’re still unsolved, unless the film-makers decide to invent a fictional denouement. This might well trigger an avalanche of legal and ethical objections.Thus, director Stefano Sollima’s four-part examination of Italy’s notorious “Mostro di Firenze” murders, which left a trail of 16 dead bodies between 1968 and 1985, can only hint strongly at the identity of the perpetrator (the individual in question vanished in 1988, and no further murders subsequently took place). But Sollima’s ambitions reach beyond the Read more ...

The return of this entertaining political drama is always welcome, though its soap-tinged mix of transatlantic politics and volatile personal relationships is beginning to look a little too genteel for our current age of ever-worsening crises.In the real world we have Trump on the rampage, the Middle East liable to blow at any moment and China surreptitiously taking over the world, but somehow The Diplomat is still fussing over the terrorist attack on a British aircraft carrier, HMS Courageous, that happened way back at the beginning of Season One. Delightfully, the show never stops believing Read more ...

Rockin’ vicar the Rev Richard Coles is not only a C of E priest and former member of Bronski Beat and The Communards, but also a purveyor of crime fiction in the shape of his Canon Clement mysteries. The first of these was Murder Before Evensong, and now it has arrived on Acorn TV, where they do a lot of this sort of thing.As its title might suggest, Murder… is rich in echoes of classic British crime-and-detection stories from way back when. There’s plenty of Agatha Christie in the mix, some Midsomer Murders, maybe a bit of Morse and perhaps a shaving or two of M R James’s celebrated ghost Read more ...

They say no good deed goes unpunished, so when New York restaurateur Jake Friedken (Jude Law) allowed his wayward and star-crossed brother Vince (Jason Bateman) back into his life, he might have expected to experience a little turbulence. Instead, he finds himself engulfed in a hair-raising struggle to save his career and even his life.While Vince has high-tailed it across country from Reno, where his encounter with a couple of con-artists found him running one of them over (twice) in a parking lot, Jake has been gee-ing up his staff for a visit by the New York Times restaurant critic. A Read more ...

Fifth time around, Slow Horses continues to show the rest of the field a clean pair of heels. Or hooves. The adventures of Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and his peculiar little band of secret service misfits have come to exert a fierce stranglehold on the viewing public. Horses must be perilously close to being officially declared a cult.Anyway, this fifth series is derived from Mick Herron’s novel London Rules, and the specific London-ness of the show continues to be an indispensable component in its success. Where TV drama often fakes up a fictional not-quite-anywhereland, Horses remains Read more ...

Scripted by Belfast-born playwright David Ireland, Coldwater is a smart and addictive thriller, which manages to squeeze some fresh twists out of its murderous narrative. It also benefits hugely from an excellent cast firing on all cylinders, while also reaping the benefits of its Scottish rural locations.But our story begins in London, where the anti-hero, John (Andrew Lincoln), suffers a traumatic event at the local school playground. He watches a woman being violently assaulted by a raging maniac, but can’t bring himself to rush to her rescue. Instead he freezes, panics, and then runs away Read more ...

ITV continues its passion for docudramas about injustice, which you can’t blame it for after the rip-roaring success of Mr Bates vs the Post Office. The issue in I Fought the Law is, from one angle, of national (even International) importance, though compared to the persecution of hundreds of innocent postmasters, some of whom committed suicide, its cause is a rarer bird.The person fighting the law is Ann Ming (Sheridan Smith), a feisty mother from Billingham, near Middlesbrough, whose daughter Julie, her oldest child, goes missing in 1989. It takes over two months for her body to be Read more ...

Why isn’t Eve Myles a superstar? Though well known for her appearances in the likes of Torchwood, Broadchurch and the brilliant Keeping Faith, you’d imagine that by now she’d have been snapped up for some mega-budget extravaganza on Amazon or Apple TV or be romping around with Tom Cruise.But she obviously likes to keep close to her Welsh roots, as she does in The Guest, and it helps her deliver a power and authenticity that might be lost in the jungle of corporate streamer-land. She plays Fran Sharp, a wealthy businesswoman who lives in a splendid house in the country near Cardiff with her Read more ...

In this strangely dreary recreation of 11th century history, it’s not just grim oop north, it’s grim everywhere. King & Conqueror purports to be the story of how the Norman monarch William (the titular Conqueror) and England’s King Harold found themselves locked in a battle to the death at Hastings, each having negotiated a fearsome labyrinth of plots, treachery, ambition and murder in order to become top dog on either side of the English Channel.But somehow, despite its rather distinguished cast, the drama obstinately refuses to catch fire. Where The Last Kingdom brilliantly evoked the Read more ...

Conceived and written by Matt Charman, whose CV includes an Oscar nomination for his work on Steven Spielberg’s film Bridge of Spies, Hostage is a rather puzzling mix of political thriller and domestic drama which can never decide whether it’s serious or not.In the lead role of British Prime Minister Abigail Dalton, Suranne Jones is called upon to do political battle with the French president Vivienne Toussaint (a cold and frosty Julie Delpy), and their fraught power-women exchanges give the show some of its best moments. Especially the bit where Toussaint bounces Dalton into a policy Read more ...

What would TV screenwriters do without drugs? In Flight, created by Mike Walden and Adam Randall, is yet another drama depicting the perils and pitfalls of getting sucked into the narcotics trade, though it does deliver a twist or two to distinguish it from earlier specimens.It revolves around Jo Conran (Katherine Kelly), a single mum who works as a flight attendant for an airline called Avalon. The fact that her job involves regular flights to various European and Far Eastern destinations means she could be very useful as a drugs courier, though this has never been her ambition. However, Read more ...