Tune into great new Sky drama The Tunnel: Vengeance

SKY ATLANTIC/NOW TV, THURSDAY 14 DECEMBER, 9PM

The first two series of The Tunnel are a rare example of a remake matching the quality of the original. The show is based on the 2011 Danish/swedish crime series The Bridge, but relocated to the French/uk border and with Clémence Poésy (Fleur Delacour in the Harry Potter movies) and Stephen Dillane (Stannis Baratheon in Game Of Thrones) as the mismatched detective duo. She’s a very French, freewheeling, Porschedriving cop with a deadly serious countenance and a complex personal life. He’s a very British, working-class policeman with a non-sense attitude. It takes them a while to click, but eventually, in classic Tv-crime-drama style, they make for a pretty good team.

THE FIRST TWO

The ten-episode first series followed the plot of the original Scandi version quite closely, at least to start with, with its story of a politician found dead and cut in half in the middle of the Channel Tunnel (The Bridge was about a body cut in half and found on… a bridge linking Denmark and Sweden). Then series two’s eight-parter was a total departure, kicking off with the crash of an airliner into the English Channel.

NOW THE THIRD

This is the third and final season, with all six episodes arriving as a SKY/NOW TV box set as soon as the first episode airs. It begins in creepy style when a French fishing boat is found adrift and on fire in the English Channel. Oh, and if you don’t like rats (and, let’s face it, who does?), get ready for a truly disturbing vast array of them in the opening episode. Karl and Elise believe the vessel, the rats, and a man who’s had his tongue cut out so he can’t speak, all point to a missing cargo of trafficked children. It’s as stylish and edgy as the first two series, with Poésy and Dillane bouncing off each other as brilliantly as ever, with an added sense of post-brexit topicality (“I voted in!” says Dillane’s Karl to an angry Elise at one point). And it makes for a gripping binge-watch, too.