CANNY DALGLIESH!
Like your TV cops cultured and super-clever? Then you’ll be delighted by the return of P. D. James’s
Anyone who’s watched Life On Mars has a pretty good idea of what a police detective in the 1970s must surely have been like: an all-action hero bristling with machismo who asks questions only after the fists fly – if they bother at all.
But forget all that when it comes to Detective Chief Inspector
Adam Dalgliesh (played by
Bertie Carvel, above).
Author P.D. James’s immortal creation is an altogether more intellectual and refined character than his peers, as we meet his latest screen incarnation in a murder mystery set in 1975 (the opener for a new series of twopart stories showing on Thursday and Friday nights for the next three weeks).
Dalgliesh has a chilly manner on the surface, but is driven by a powerful sense of right and wrong, and away from his work has even earned a fair reputation as a published poet – heaven knows what The Sweeney’s
Regan and Carter would make of that.
Older viewers will have fond memories of Roy Marsden’s acclaimed portrayal of Dalgliesh on ITV in the 1980s and 1990s, and Martin Shaw also played the detective in two films for the
BBC more recently.
But now Carvel makes the role his own, with a delicately judged performance from the star of Doctor Foster and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
Here is a sleuth with a low-key yet captivating manner and a precise attention to detail; away from work, this son of a church man is haunted by the tragically premature death of his wife and reveals little of his private self to those around him.
His colleagues are rather less cultured, most notably his junior, Detective Sergeant Charles Masterson (Jeremy Irvine,
War Horse), who is the walking embodiment of testosterone infused ambition and surly insubordination.
James gave her legions of fans 14 novels in the Dalgliesh series, and three have been chosen for the scripts by awardwinning playwright Helen Edmundson in the first season.
Coming up in future weeks are adaptations of The Black Tower and A Taste For Death, but we begin with Shroud For A Nightingale. Set at a nursing training school, it’s a prime example of the brilliance of
James and her ability to create elegantly plotted and riveting murder mysteries imbued with far more depth than a routine whodunnit, as the twists and turns of the story reveal the true characters of the suspects and even shed a little light on Dalgliesh’s inner workings.
If you’ve been craving a reassuringly old-fashioned telly ’tec free of flashy gimmicks and simply devoted to absorbing stories, look no further – the solution is here.