Baptiste BBC1, 9pm

Reunite two of television’s finest dramatists with a popular star and you have what should be a sure-fire recipe for success. So not surprisingly, Harry and Jack Williams’ latest drama starring Tchéky Karyo’s troubled but humane detective, Julien Baptiste, doesn’t disappoint.

This time he’s on a mission to find the family of the British Ambassador to Hungary, Emma Chambers (Fiona Shaw, right with Karyo), after they’ve disappeared. But be warned, this is a complex story, leaping back and forth in time, that demands intense and constant concentration from the viewer.

Ordinarily Karyo’s sheer charisma could monopolise the drama, but of course the brilliant Shaw matches him and adds engrossing layers of depth and emotion as the plot twists and turns, revealing its solutions only gradually. ★★★★★