IAN HYLAND

on the weekend’s telly

Deadwater Fell, Channel 4 ★★★★★

The Masked Singer may not be my cup of tea, but as it’s been so long since we’ve had a genuine Saturday night hit I’m glad to see it is still keeping five million people guessing on a Saturday night.

Of course, ITV will now flog the format to death and we will soon be asked to watch The Masked Dancer, The Masked Baker and The Masked Love Islander.

Thankfully, for any viewers wishing to stretch their detective skills beyond guessing which showbiz has-been is singing Agadoo dressed as a rubber duck, Channel 4 has come to the rescue.

David Tennant’s new whodunnit Deadwater Fell made a cracking start on Friday.

Featuring a seemingly perfect middle class family on the windswept coast of Western Scotland, it may have looked like a Boden catalogue had been turned into a murder mystery but there was plenty of substance beneath the style.

There was subterfuge, too… mainly in the writing room.

There were so many red herrings, secrets, flashbacks and possible fantasy scenes going on that it was hard to know what was actually happening.

It made me want to grow a beard like David Tennant’s just so I had something to scratch.

All we knew for sure was that Tennant’s character, GP Tom Kendrick, was the only survivor of a house fire that killed his wife and three young children.

With three episodes still to come, I’m keeping an open mind.

There is definitely something dodgy about that beard though.