Andy Millward

From the pen of Anthony "Alex Rider" Horowitz comes a thriller pitched somewhere between Lost and And Then There Were None, and it polarises opinion like few other series. Lucy Mangan in The Guardian loved it, but many others were dismissive, considering it a rip-off of Lost. NBIAMM is effectively a closed mystery like many an Agatha Christie. Set in a Mexican jungle where a twin prop plane carrying eight passengers plus two crew crashes, due to a mysterious combination of a faulty GPS and no fuel, all but the stewardess survive the impact. The pilot needs surgery without anaesthetic, but dies in the night, apparently murdered. And then people are picked off, one at a time. Ah, of but the original ten, only nine bodies are recovered by the Mexican army, so someone survived. The bodies are heavily decomposed after 9 days in the jungle, so it's a detective game, not only to guess whodunnit but who will be the next to die, and how, and why... Speculation between the group reaches fever pitch, all the more as people die. Meanwhile, all the protagonists have guilty secrets in their back stories, and suspicions about the other protagonists. Who do we trust, who is lying, who are the red herrings? Whether or not the drama and the paranoid dialogue captures your attention, the guessing game is irresistible. Personally, I enjoyed the series, in part as a straight-faced send-up of the genre, and slightly because the title amused me, a reminder of a film I once saw called The Living Dead From The Manchester Morgue. But most of all because it's riveting television.

You could judge Dept Q as just another police drama featuring a physically and emotionally scarred cop, but that would be to miss the point. Like Slow Horses it is a deliciously subversive drama with a darkly comic fast-talking script, grimy colour-saturated visuals (love the 70s set design and carpets) with lashings of bloodshed. The eponymous department is also reminiscent of Slow Horses, being a collection of misfits investigating cold cases as a way of keeping them out of mischief. Rather than an obscure building far from the madding crowd, Matthew Goode's sardonic but emotionally crippled DCI Carl Morck and his small band are relegated to a musty basement in Edinburgh police HQ. Even the car allocated to him is a great joke: an ancient Ford Sierra dating back to the early 80s. Morck himself, gaunt and gaunted, is fresh back from being shot in the head, in which attack his best friend and colleague was paralysed and is in hospital, yin to his yang. Morck has obligatory therapy sessions with Rachel Irving (the wonderful Kelly McDonald.). Their tennis match conversations are worth the price of admission on their own. Said team includes a Syrian expat ex-cop, and an annoying apprentice who has survived her own breakdown. In the course of their duties get nothing but abuse from Morck (think Gary Oldfield as Jackson Lamb), but prove remarkably capable of amazing insights. There are a few mysteries and dramatic subplots woven into the script, some pertaining to ambitious but failed prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie) and her handicapped brother, with the fate of both hanging in the balance. In fact there is so much to savour in every shot, I wouldn't want to spoil your pleasure. The fact that it was produced by the team behind the excellent The Queens Gambit will not surprise you in the slightest. (9/10)