Review: The Level (S1 E1/6), Friday 30th September, ITV

Detective Sergeant Nancy Devlin (Karla Crome) is a decorated police officer – well, she’s just won an ‘official police award’ – and is having an affair with colleague Kevin O’Dowd (Rob James-Collier, ex-Downton Abbey). But no-one knows she’s also protecting her schoolfriend’s father, dodgy haulier Frank Le Saux (Philip Glenister).

NB: Spoilers

Channel 4 acquires season three of Fargo for UK transmission

Ah, Fargo. Noah Hawley’s masterful small-screen continuation of the Coen brothers’ equally masterful, Oscar-winning movie of the same name. It’s certainly one of my favourite crime dramas, and over two series it has maintained an extremely high standard. The good news is that series three, which will go into production later this year, will be back on UK, free-to-air televisions, thanks to Channel 4.

Review: Paranoid (S1 E2/8), Thursday 29th September, ITV

It’s time for the third in our Thursday triple header. Last week’s opening episode of Paranoid was hardly an auspicious start, especially when you consider there are eight episodes in the series. It started off in jolting fashion – a man ran amok in a children’s playground, stabbing to death one of the mothers in plain sight of everyone. So far so shocking. But, as one of our readers pointed out, it developed into an exercise of shaking a big bag of chichés, emptying them onto a blank canvas and seeing which fell out first.

NB: There are spoilers in this review

Review: The Night Of (S1 E4&5/8), Thursday 22nd and Thursday 29th September, Sky Atlantic

With the first three episodes of this superb American remake of BBC series Criminal Justice, we saw young student Nasir Khan tabbed for the murder of Andrea Cornish. Although he made some elementary, incriminating mistakes the moment he woke up from a drugs and alcohol bender that saw Cornish stabbed to death in the bedroom, his innocence has always been suggested, even though we don’t really know what happened. Ever since then, Naz has been plunged into a nightmare, tasked with surviving the harsh terrain of Rikers Island correctional facility, while both defence and prosecution prepare their cases for and against him on the outside.

NB: Spoilers ahoy

Review: The Fall (S3 E1/6), Thursday 29th September, BBC2

(C) The Fall 3 Ltd – Photographer: Helen Sloan

It’s two years since we left the world’s most unlikely grief counsellor, Paul Spector, AKA the Belfast Strangler, gut-shot in a clearing in the woods outside the city. This time the carnage was not of his making. While under arrest and helping the police to find former girlfriend Rose Stagg, his latest captive, Spector (Jamie Dornan) was unexpectedly shot by Loyalist gangster Jimmy Tyler, who suspected him of having an affair with his estranged wife.

NB: Spoilers ahead…

Why 9pm, Thursday is your new TV logjam

It happens from time to time, especially when there’s just so much going on in the world of crime drama. We’re slap-bang in the middle of the new autumn season, and it’s only natural to expect that channels will schedule some of its wares not necessarily against each other but playing out at the same time. This season, it looks as though Thursday nights are the big logjam, so it’s best to set your DVRs accordingly. So, what’s on tonight?

Review: Ängelby (S1 E6/12), Wednesday 28th September, ITV Encore

We’ve reached the half-way stage of this bonkers Swedish supernatural crime drama, and there felt as though things really began to happen in this sixth episode. Connections between characters previously unseen began to reveal themselves. Which was great, but I still came away scratching my head. 

BBC confirms transmission date for season two of The Missing

Back in 2014, the Williams brothers’ The Missing enthralled viewers with its choppy narrative and emotional story of parents searching for their missing son, who had disappeared while on holiday in France. It was soon announced that a second series had been commissioned and that an all-new story would be at its heart. Now we know that story, and we now know when the eight-part story will start.

Review: National Treasure (S1 E2/4), Tuesday 27th September, Channel 4

At the end of episode one of this outstanding, unsettling four-part drama, legendary comic Paul Finchley (Robbie Coltrane in imperious form), got the news that seven women had come forward to accuse him of historical sex crimes. It was a blow to the avuncular colossus and his long-suffering wife Marie (Julie Walters). She had chosen to believe, but in this episode that loyalty and stoicism was beginning to erode, and questions were beginning to be answered, both of Finchley and herself.

NB: There are some spoilers in this review

Review: Ripper Street (S4 E6/7), Monday 25th September, BBC1

(C) Tiger Aspect 2016 – Photographer: Bernard Walsh

There’s a ghost in the house, and it’s Long Susan – officially she’s dead, but when Rose sees her hanging around her child Connor, even Drake thinks she’s imagining it. Mathilda’s on hand to watch Connor, but who’s watching her? There’s some sort of wolf-creature on the loose in Whitechapel, and it’s already killed once, slaying Drake’s protege Thomas Gower – and maybe the rabbi Ratowski as well?

NB: Spoilers abound