Even the most glazed-eyed Europhile must have begun to notice that the EU's righteous halo is dimming a tiny bit. Against a backdrop of currency chaos and uncontrolled immigration, issues of sovereignty and national self-determination are beginning to loom large. This is the aiming point of this new drama series, created by Norwegian novelist Jo Nesbø, though it comes in at a slightly different angle.

“Finding the Light”, the second episode of this four-part series, took us to the period when Scottish intellectuals led the world in innovative and revolutionary thinking, Edinburgh’s neo-classical architecture in the leafy streets of the New Town made for new standards of civic architecture, and Scottish education could be of the highest quality.

Tracey Ullman is, I suspect, virtually unknown to anybody who either wasn’t around in the 1980s or isn’t a student of that decade’s comedy. For those in either camp, she was a very big name in British television before she left the UK to live and work in the United States – where, incidentally, she became part The Simpsons story (its creators worked on one of the shows she did in America).

The miracle of galloping digital technology has become a mixed blessing. We have iPads, space stations and self-parking cars. On the other hand, we also have what might be perfectly good TV programmes made ludicrous by absurd CGI monsters.

Walter Presents, Channel 4's clever and welcome strand of foreign, subtitled drama for broadcast both on television and online, is already throwing up some interesting titles. It launched with the Cold War-set Deutschland 83, and now second in the series to be given a broadcast run is Spin, first seen on French television in 2012 under the title Les hommes de l'ombre (The Shadow Men).

Interesting idea – a Western set in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1870s. Jessica Raine, spotted last year as the other Boleyn girl in Wolf Hall and evidently keen to put Call the Midwife as far behind her as possible, stars as Annie Quantain, a schoolmaster's widow forced to leave the family home thanks to a mountain of debts. As the bailiffs cart away the furniture, she's horrified to find herself a penniless vagrant.

So, Andrew Davies has bitten off the big one. It may have come as a surprise to some that the master of adapting the British classics for television hadn’t read Tolstoy’s classic-to-end-all-classics until the BBC mooted the idea of a new screen version, but this first episode (of six) boded very well all the same.

Since Benedict Cumberbatch is now one of the world's most in-demand actors, and his sidekick Martin Freeman isn't doing too badly either, getting them on a set together is like trying to get Simon & Garfunkel to do a reunion. Hence Sherlock fans now have just this one-off New Year special to slake their Cumberlust.

It's hard to disagree with Matthew Wright, in his brisk analysis of the shortcomings of British crime drama (see below). He notes how flashes of inspiration are smothered by skimpy budgets and the timidity of commissioning editors. The disastrous anti-climax of London Spy was a classic example. A British Sopranos seems further away than ever.

None, or two? Only the tiniest whiff of spoiler is involved in pointing out that while the stage version, or at least the one I saw with an actor friend playing an early victim, settled for a semi-happy ending, this magnificently brooding adaptation in three parts – just the right length, surely – dooms us to ultimate discomfort, as an especially merciless Agatha Christie intended.