International man of mystery

The Missing’s Baptiste is back – as the French detective flies to Hungary to help out Fiona Shaw’s British diplomat

One’s all heart, the other’s purely cerebral: take your pick from two very different sleuths going up against each other at the same time tonight.

Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo, above left) is the incomparably dogged and dependable detective who will stop at nothing to track down the missing-persons cases that ordinary police officers are unable to solve.

But as the impassioned Frenchman returns for his own second series – having previously been the central hero in both series of The Missing – Baptiste is in trouble of his own.

The last time we saw him he was devastated by the revelation that his own son was a mole inside the Dutch police force, in the pay of an international gang of sex traffickers. Now Baptiste is a restless lone operator, taking on assignments from desperate families as he strives to stay busy and exorcise his inner demons.

When he hears that the family of the British Ambassador to Hungary, Emma Chambers (Killing Eve’s Fiona Shaw, above right), has gone missing, he feels compelled to fly to her aid and offer his services in tracking them down. But in a cunning and complex script by Harry and Jack Williams – the brilliant brothers who also created Liar – the storyline leaps back and forth between the start of the case and the consequences of the investigation some 14 months on.

You’ll need to watch very carefully as every single forensic detail may count if you want to have any chance of achieving the impossible and cracking the mystery before Baptiste.

A true star with a rare, gentle spirit, Karyo is a charismatic joy to watch throughout and, alongside him, Shaw is also a peerless screen presence.

The opening episode finishes on one heck of a cliffhanger but – mercifully for those who can’t wait – the entire six-part run is available to watch on iPlayer straight afterwards.

Meanwhile, Professor T (Sunday, ITV, 9pm) introduces a main character who is far from being one of life’s natural crimefighters. Instead, Jasper Tempest (Ben Miller) prefers the rarefied environment of Cambridge University, where he teaches forensic science on an entirely theoretical basis and his colleagues indulge his eccentric and awkward personality. But he’s abruptly wrested out of academia when a former student turned police officer calls on him to help solve a series of attacks.

Miller’s penchant for deadpan comedy lights up the drama in this show, which is based on a Belgian series of the same name.