By Paul Bradley

Untamed is Netflix’s new crime drama, and although it’s another murdered-girl mystery, there are a few things that set it apart: firstly, it has two impressive leads in Sam Neill and Eric Bana, and secondly, it’s set in the truly epic and underused Yosemite National Park.

I have a sneaking suspicion Netflix wanted to use Yosemite because some of their older documentaries were terrifying ones about people free-climbing the faces of El Capitan and Halfdome, those massive mountains we see quite a lot of here – and sure enough, the very first scene is of a climb gone wrong as the body of the missing girl falls from the top and catches on the ropes of a couple of unlucky climbers.

It’s a memorable moment, but even from that first scene, something doesn’t feel completely right: it’s too well-lit, too lifeless. And in fact, although it’s set in Yosemite, it was filmed mostly in Canada, using digital versions of the Yosemite scenery as a backdrop.

It’s not terrible, but, as I said above, it never quite rings true, being, in the Netflix way, too clean and overproduced to fully convince. The story too, interesting to begin with, gets bogged down with too many characters and their backstories.

It loses your attention as it loses its own focus on the story that’s meant to be at the heart of it all, and while some of the subplots might have been decent stories in their own right, here they just feel like padding and deliberate red-herringry, if that’s a valid term.

It’s saved somewhat by flashes of sharp dialogue, and some steely performances: Lily Santiago is feisty as a new ranger sent to assist Agent Turner in his investigation, and while Bana (who plays Turner) is in some ways just another troubled, grumpy investigator, he’s good at it, bringing proper star power to the screen (Sam Neill has little to do, but it’s still good to see him…and you sense he has a greater purpose than is clear at first).

It’s perfectly watchable, but a bit light on tension and the sense of wilderness; and while “mediocre” is not a bad result these days, with these ingredients it should have been more.

Here We Go BBC1, Friday, 9pm

It’s hard to find a decent sitcom these days, and harder still to find a decent family sitcom: there’s Mrs Brown’s Boys, of course, but that only proves my point, and it was the very moment Lee Mack’s Not Going Out fully became a family sitcom (introducing children who had no particular purpose) that it stopped being worth catching.

But Here We Go, which has returned for a new season, is a good family sitcom (with the mockumentary-of-embarrassment flavour of The Office) which has somehow flown mostly under the radar since its release.

If you haven’t seen it, it follows the clumsy but warm adventures of the Jessop family: slightly self-important dad Paul (Jim Howick), quietly panicking mum Rachel (Katherine Parkinson), their daughter Amy (Freya Parks) and, mostly invisible because he’s filming everything, son Sam (Jude Morgan-Collie). That’s enough to start with, but there are other significant roles for Paul’s mum Sue (Alison Steadman) and Rachel’s brother Robin (played by Tom Basden, who also created the whole thing). It’s a nice mix of characters, in a series of recognisably awkward fixes, such as getting locked in their house while trying to go to an escape room event.

Everything works well together, from the performances to the writing (all that overlapping dialogue), and while the show covers some familiar ground, the structure is clever enough to set it apart.

Usually it starts with a glimpse of some unfathomable family scene, then cuts to several days before to lead us into it, with several seemingly-unrelated subplots all coming together in good-natured pandemonium at the end.

In one of the new episodes, for instance, an anniversary gift of a Bulgarian smart home assistant, an emphasis on the family being a team, and a huge Lego set ends with Paul telling the emergency services his wife has just knocked over the Eiffel Tower. It’s genuinely funny, a very welcome guffaw on a Friday night.

Operation Dark Phone: Murder By Text Channel 4, Sunday, 9pm

Less amusing was Operation Dark Phone: Murder By Text, in which Channel 4 told us how secure messaging is used by global networks of organised crime gangs, and how, for 74 days in 2020, an international police operation hacked into the encrypted network EncroChat (described as “the LinkedIn of organised crime” by a former commander at the UK’s National Crime Agency), giving them access to every message the gangs used to traffic drugs or kidnap and murder people.

The story is dark and involving, although I would prefer a straight documentary, without the dramatic reconstructions used here. Still, the actors, when they’re not just lounging or preening, do get to use the slangy language of the gangs, which is interesting: a pineapple is actually a grenade, did you know?

So too are the nicknames used by the criminals, which sound like something made up by an AI bot with an absurd sense of humour: nicknames like Live-long, Mystical-steak and Valued-bridge are among the more printable ones.

With all that colour, and the real tension and danger involved, it makes for a compelling story, even if some of the criminals are depicted as even cheesier in real life than you’d see in, say, a typical Costa del Crime drama.

It’s a four-part series, though, and although it’s interesting, the length could have been halved by dropping some scenes. And while this has nothing to do with the quality of the series, I sometimes wonder if the value of showing this kind of operation is outweighed by the risks that the gangs will see it too and learn from it.

The Assassin Amazon Prime

Meanwhile, Amazon is having some fun in The Assassin, taking the old retired-hitman trope but having a middle-aged, wine-loving woman in the role.

That woman is Keeley Hawes as Julie, who is living a relaxing life on a Greek island when several things come her way: her son Edward (Freddie Highmore), a pending new set of in-laws, and an assassination plot in which she’s the target. Can she draw on her old contacts, and her long-dormant skills, to save them all and figure out what’s happening?

It’s certainly more tongue-in-cheek than, say, The Jackal: in its intermittent violence and absurdity, it’s somewhere between The Tourist and Black Doves, so if you liked those this is worth a look.

The first episode is great fun, setting up tone and character in a few fast, easy scenes before it really kicks off; and Highmore and Hawes have great chemistry, sarking and sniping at each other and clearly having a great time.

Questions do get in the way, mind you. There’s an opening scene showing Julie as an 18-year-old assassin which makes you ask where she got such a modern clamshell mobile phone in 1994, and what kind of assassin takes a pregnancy kit on such a violent assignation.

And as the pace slackens after episode one, it’s sometimes too mouthy, and Highmore’s nervy mumble starts to grate a wee bit. But there are enough twists and mysteries to keep you watching, and Hawes is wonderfully tetchy in the centre.

But wait a moment…Freddie Highmore is now a grown man, married in real life? How and when did that happen? Wasn’t he a soulful-eyed young boy just last year?