Babylon Berlin

Sky Atlantic, 9pm & 10.05pm

If you haven’t yet discovered the pleasures of this German costume drama set among police detectives during the Weimar Republic, you can binge-watch the first three seasons before diving into this fourth run.

As the story resumes, we enter the dark era of the 1930s, as Nazi gangs become more dominant on the streets, and democracy is increasingly under threat amid the poverty of the depression, even as the decadent cabaret set parties on.

As our detective hero Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch), in tandem with former police clerk Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries, right), investigates the murky world of boxing, he finds himself uncomfortably close to brownshirt thugs who are asserting their power in all walks of society. It’s a confident return for a show that smartly balances history and drama to captivating effect.

★★★★☆