What to watch
In the Dark BBC ONE, 9.00PM
Bestselling British crime writer Mark Billingham’s books have been adapted for television before but never so compellingly as in this new series scripted by veteran screenwriter Danny Brocklehurst
(Ordinary Lies). He sidesteps the author’s popular Tom Thorne character and pushes his sidekick DI Helen Weeks (Myanna Buring) to the fore.
It is a strategy that succeeds brilliantly in this opening episode which, despite the series title’s reference to one of Billingham’s biggestselling novels, is actually based on the less well known Time of Death. The pregnant Weeks returns to her home in Derbyshire and becomes embroiled in a high-profile investigation.
Her involvement is peripheral at first – the prime suspect’s wife, Linda Bates (Emma Fryer), is Weeks’ childhood best friend – but, little by little, she’s drawn into the centre of the case, not least because of a secret of her own. Buring, already a well-known face from
Ripper Street, is terrific in her first lead role, entirely credible as a cop with a conscience and great instincts, and she receives great support all round, especially from Ben Batt as her partner and fellow detective DI Paul Hopkins. Gerard O’donovan