Smooth sleuth Carvel a marvel
ANY time someone in a whodunnit says “it won’t hurt”, you know all hell is about to break loose.
Poor, sour-faced trainee nurse Heather Pearce barely got past page one of the script before being extinguished.
She was poisoned, it appears, after being asked to play the patient during a medical demonstration at a nursing training academy.
She goes to her death in the most gruesome of final moments. After what’s supposed to be milk is piped into her stomach as a fellow student reassures her, she gags like a cat with fur balls.
Wouldn’t we all, mind. Moments later, she’s writhing around on the floor like Ripley giving birth to an extraterrestrial in Aliens. Then doof. She’s gone.
It’s down to Det Chief Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh – who debuts on Channel 5 and streaming service Acorn in his third TV reincarnation – to solve the crime. And the 1970s super-sleuth has got his work cut out, as the death toll begins to notch up all too quickly.
To my mind, there’s always a danger of reinventing the wheel one too many times with old dramas because new versions can so easily fall flat.
Yet in Shroud for a Nightingale, the first of three two-parters that aired earlier this week, Dalgliesh’s character is still just as captivating. Like Poirot, he has timeless appeal.
Much of that is down to the skill of late British author PD James, who first brought him to life in the pages of her 1962 novel, Cover Her Face.
She’s conjured up a character full of depth. He’s a crime-solver and a poet. He has the cunning and intellect of Sherlock. He oozes the brooding good looks of Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy.
He is unflappable and meticulous, yet there’s a private pain hiding beneath the surface that makes him all the more lustworthy. In direct contrast, his grating sidekick DS Charles Masterson (Jeremy Irvine) only helps to elevate Dalgliesh’s superiority further. He’s mouthy and carelessly impulsive – all hot air and hormones as he enjoys a fling with a pretty nurse.
The plot is clever too, with so many twists and turns that even the most eagleeyed amateur sleuth will be confounded.
The role is brought to life by Bertie Carvel – once the most loathsome man on TV as cheating husband Simon in Doctor Foster. He’s as brilliant as Roy Marsden was in the 1980s.
When Dalgliesh meets his intellectual equal in attractive and educated Matron Mary Taylor, there’s a tangible chemistry in the air. I’m willing them to kiss… but of course they’re far too professional and restrained for that.
Until almost the final scene, I’ve still got multiple prime suspects. The actual killer is, of course, under our nose and the one we least expected.