Black Work

Jo Gillespie (Sheridan Smith) has an undercover cop, Ryan (Kenny Doughty) for a husband, with whom she has a daughter and a stepson.  His frequent absences from her life have led to her seeking solace with one of his colleagues (Matthew McNulty).  She decides to give her marriage another go, but before she can do anything about it, he is found shot dead in an empty warehouse.  She'd believed he was at a football match (that went on all night...?) and so she begins a quest to find out who her dead husband really was and how he died.  Unsurprisingly, the police aren't too keen, especially as it soon becomes clear that they aren't too sure what he was doing either.

The post-mortem discovery of a loved one's secret life is hardly a new formula, but there's plenty of basis in reality for the scenario, at least, with recent news stories and trials concerning cops undercover for years, going 'native', having relationships and even children.  Difficult to tell whether this will be credible, as so far there have been a few implausibilities or handy coincidences (surveillance teams would go to the trouble of putting bugged conversations on CD, of all things?  Said CDs are stowed in the airing cupboard?  Obliging lover leaks information about dead hubby's undercover identity?  Same dead hubby has a hideout his bosses haven't investigated?).  The next two parts could give us explanations for these things, and the cast is strong enough to keep us watching to find out.  In addition, there's some nice footage of Leeds and West Yorkshire as neither the grim Northern hell nor the American-sell gloss usually depicted.

Shetland

Shetland.  It's almost Scandi but not quite.  The title of the source novel, 'Red Bones', obviously didn't sell it to an audience for whom crime drama these days is all 'location, location, location'.  ITV's 'Vera' is also penned by Ann Cleeves, but Tyneside - also the setting for the 'Gently' books - hasn't the natural advantages of Sweden ('Wallander'), Connemara ('Single-Handed', 'Jack Taylor') or, errr, 'Midsomer...'?

Like detective Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall in huggable jumpers), we'd prefer the Islands to remain places of negligible crime rates and no retail chains, so this is an unwelcome exposure, but ah, those bleak, windswept hills and craggy brows - the latter belonging to every islander over the age of 30.  If this wasn't quite Scandi, it wasn't quite US crime drama either, and none the worse for it.  Current British efforts to emulate foreign success, such as 'Mayday' and 'Broadchurch', seem like strung-out scenarios rather than slow-burn thrillers.  Scandis can get it right ('The Killing' series one) or wrong ('The Bridge') and ditto the Americans ('Homeland' series one and two, respectively) but getting it wrong means either yawningly long or absurd developments.  'Mayday' somehow managed both.

'Shetland' had enough going on to build interest and sustain two hours.  We questioned developments but didn't find the TWNHs that usually pepper these dramas like stray shot from a murderer's rampage (see 'Vera').  It even made the Vikings look... well, like a sort of homely, northern, weapon-wielding version of Morris Men.  If this feels more like a re-enactment in more ways than one, that's because it is: yet another crime drama with a nice backdrop without any  claim to breaking the mould.  There are three more Shetland novels at the moment, which equates to six hours of feet-up crime drama.  Anymore for anymore?

The Secret of Crickley Hall

OK, this has all the staple ingredients: a 'normal' couple called 'Eve' and 'Gabe' (pick up that Old Testament, now!) with a tragedy (a missing child), a big creepy old house with a sinister reputation and a back story involving cruel guardians of innocent children, a strange attic and an even stranger basement, a dog - c'mon, there's always a ghost-detecting dog - swinging doors, scary-looking old toys and a noisy clock.  If you can't guess its every twist and turn, you can grasp the general gist.

At the moment there isn't a clear link between the orphanage of the 1940s and the modern-day goings on, but we do know that there was a flash flood in 1943 that killed 68 of the Devil's Cleave villagers, that the village was named for a legend involving... yes, the Devil, swearing revenge on the area, and that Suranne Jones has some kind of telepathic contact both with her missing son and with the past tragedies at the Hall.

If you want revisionist, this won't be your bag, but for an old-fashioned grip-the-cushions ghost story, this will darken your autumn evenings quite nicely.