RTÉ’s Hidden Assets could be called, well, a sort-of hidden asset for the station: it’s not terribly well known, but it’s been fairly successful, at least enough to warrant continuing into what is now its third season. And would it be terribly cynical to ask if the fact that the Criminal Assets Bureau was in the news this week, selling off properties seized from criminals and making a profit for the state in the process, was just neatly timed to raise awareness of the show and the agency?
Yes, I’m sure that’s too conspiracy-minded. But the fresh action here does, as usual, involve CAB, with Nora-Jane Noone returning as DS Claire Wallace, alongside old colleague DS Sean Prendergast (Aaron Monaghan). This year, the story begins with the murder of a journalist and her family in Bilbao, which, on investigation, seems to be linked to a previous tragic CAB operation in Ireland. As Claire becomes involved in the case, they begin to discover a criminal network with fingers in all sorts of questionable pies.
There is, I think, the foundation for an interesting crime series here – we all know about CAB for a start, and the international locations give it an extra dimension. And even though it’s an RTÉ drama, at no point do you roll your eyes or guffaw at its accidental comedy. But three seasons in, it still hasn’t really developed character: the dialogue is never more than functional, and the grey colouring, rather than adding realism, just makes it feel a bit vapid. It’s watchable, but too bland to care about.
Shetland, BBC1, Wednesday, 9pm
Shetland has returned to the telly for its tenth season – a figure which surprises me not because it seems like a lot, but because the show seems to have been a steady fixture for much longer than that. Maybe it’s just the gruelling weather and the situations the characters find themselves in – remember, after all, how Jimmy Perez, the original lead character was “done” by the end of his run.
You might expect a little flourish here to celebrate its tenth year, but if there is one it’s not apparent in the first episode, which carries on the usual crime story in the usual ways. As we rejoin them, DI Ruth Calder (Ashley Jensen) and DI Tosh McIntosh (Alison O’Donnell) have their overtime banter (while waiting to raid a boat suspected of smuggling) interrupted by news of another murder. This time it’s the nasty (“as bad as it gets”) killing of an ageing retired social worker in a remote part of the island, and as suspicions waver among suspects, the local community appears to be hiding some dark secrets.
Actually that stuff with the boat at the beginning didn’t make a lot of sense, but I presume it will have something to do with the main plot later on. And the main plot is the usual kind of thing, albeit also nudging some regular secondary characters into more important roles than usual. And as a whole it’s the same, comfortingly dreich kind of story, never raising the roof but always watchable.
The biggest surprise for me here was looking at the actor playing the son of the victim: a man with a handsome, slightly weathered face that seemed vaguely – but only vaguely – familiar.
Well, he turned out to be played by Stuart Townsend, a man I last saw probably 25 years ago in Shooting Fish: he was set to be the next big heartthrob at the time, and was even the original Aragorn in LOTR before he was (wisely) replaced by Viggo Mortensen at the last minute. Interesting to catch up.
Down Cemetery Road, Apple TV
For an author who’s not really that well known, Mick Herron is surely having a purple patch right now: his Slow Horses series continues to be one of the best things on the box, and now Apple TV have just serialised another of his books, Down Cemetery Road – and just as Slow Horses attracted stellar names like Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, this has Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson in the main roles.
It wastes no time in kicking off either, with an awkward dinner party in the home of art restorer Sarah (Ruth Wilson) and her partner Mark (Tom Riley) interrupted by an explosion a few streets away in Oxford. Ruth recognises the little girl caught up in the blast, but when she tries to visit her in hospital she is not allowed. Soon she realises that the official position about what happened does not match what she witnessed: the girl is missing, photos are edited, and everybody’s unwilling to speak about it. She’s determined, though, and her efforts to figure it out lead her to the struggling Oxford Investigations, led by married couple Joe (Adam Godley) and Zoe (Emma Thompson). But things get darker before they get brighter.
There are some echoes of Slow Horses, mainly in the sassy dialogue and Herron’s deep suspicion of officialdom, and perhaps even in its sense of place. But it doesn’t have the oppressive cityscape, or the mouldy atmosphere oozing through the screen, so it feels different enough.
The story, while it becomes a touch too twisty, is intriguing enough to keep you watching, just to see what the shady authorities are up to here, even through some dodgy decisions and slow pacing.
The characters differ in their authenticity, almost distractingly so. The villains are just too villainous, from the too-smarmy colleague played by Tom Goodman Hill to the Ministry Of Defence division head played by Darren Boyd, who is sharp-tongued but cartoonishly, unrelentingly evil.
It unbalances the show somewhat, as if it doesn’t know how seriously to take itself. But on the other hand, the two women are excellent, particularly Thompson as the vitriolic, slightly punkish Zoe (“I don’t drink prosecco and I don’t bond emotionally”).
The best parts of the whole thing are when the two are on screen together: there’s a real chemistry there that raises the level of the entire series.
Kingdom, BBC1, Sunday, 6.20pm
BBC1’s new natural history series is familiar in a lot of ways: the glowing photography, the African subjects, the David Attenborough narration. But it’s also tackling a few new ideas and technologies.
Firstly, it’s an in-depth look at the ecology of a single place (Nsefu in Zambia), following specific families of leopards, hyenas, wild dogs and lions as they all try to survive: facing the same hurdles, sometimes clashing with each other.
The power dynamics are fascinating, and it’s not often that a show like this shows us how a good thing for one animal can come at a cost to another; and there are some very dramatic scenes of that exact thing here (usually involving the hyenas, animals somehow capable of appearing both terribly pitiful and monstrously fierce).
The other notable element is the photography, which is not exactly new (despite some of the hype) but certainly improved.
There are more moving cameras, and there is footage captured by tiny drones that race alongside the animals in ways we haven’t really seen to this extent.
It all gives a more immediate and intimate multiple portrait than we’ve seen before, as close to being in among the action as we might care to come.
