Safe House

"It's okay, they're saying we might be the new 'Broadchurch'."

The clue is in the title, since the drama would be a pretty poor one if the house was actually safe.  Robert (Christopher Eccleston) is an ex-cop who had a breakdown after a woman he was protecting was shot in the street.  He has renounced policing and has restored a remote, grim old house with his wife (Marsha Thomason) and has made a new life for himself running a B&B, acquiring enough friends to make a decent birthday party and swimming in the lake without a thought of Weil's disease.  When his wife invites his ex-colleague (Paterson Joseph) to visit their idyll, Robert is persuaded to allow his house to be used as a 'safe house', protecting vulnerable witnesses.  (This might not seem like a good idea, but characters in dramas are not to be dissuaded, and Robert does at least show a nifty line in evading a pursuer in a car chase.)

A mum (Nicola Stephenson), her young son and teenaged stepdaughter arrive at the house after the boy was the victim of an attempted kidnapping which hospitalised his father (Jason Merrells).  Blackpool Pleasure Beach seems a rather odd choice for an abduction, and either the child mysteriously didn't scream or the crowds just ignored a child in peril as the bearded villain made off with him.  It's clear the man knew the dad, who came after him and was getting a kicking when a motorist, presumably an innocent bystander, waded in to help and was subsequently stabbed.  Recovering in hospital, dad is stunned to hear that the stabbed victim has died and shockingly reluctant to accept help from the police.  Could this have something to do with his student son, who is AWOL and clearly involved in something dodgy?

This is one of those dramas that ratchets up the tension consistently and throws in just enough backstory to keep things interesting, the risk being that the pay off has to be pretty strong to make it all worthwhile.  No wishy-washy, or wildly unlikely, explanations for the action are going to satisfy viewers who have given four episodes of their time (time may as well be measured in episodes as in minutes, or coffee spoons).  We are rooting for it, having sat through one, and if it must be compared to 'Broadchurch', please let it be series one and not series two.

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.

The Man Who Crossed Hitler

Based on true events from 1931 when a lawyer, Hans Litten, forced Adolf Hitler into a courtroom.  The lawyer was a liberal, left-leaning, even, and Jewish.  The only possible TWNHs could be in the minute details of production, or of character portrayal.  We're not familiar enough with either to recognise any.  The familiarity of the story, though, is all the more shocking and uplifting for being true: man of integrity defies rising tyrant, achieves the only likely victory - a moral one - and pays the likely penalty of losing his life.  An intelligent script, good performances (playing Hitler must be only slightly less trying than really holding his views) and a great argument for supporting single dramas.  We'd studied modern history and not come across Mr Litten, a man with the courage of his convictions in an age of overblown icons and moral abdication.