We’ve been speculating – with some good reason – that BBC Four has its shows lined up for the first quarter of 2019, and we’ve been hoping that Trapped, Spiral and others will play out on the channel.
Now the channel has confirmed four international dramas for its Saturday-night, 9pm slot.
The first one to hit our screens is the four-part Australian drama, Safe Harbour, which was trailed during series two of Black Lake.
The thriller begins when six friends set sail on a yacht trip from Brisbane to Indonesia. What begins as an enjoyable holiday adventure unexpectedly changes when they come across a fishing boat only a day’s sail from their destination. The friends come to the aid of a group of asylum seekers on the broken-down boat, but this encounter leads to a series of events that change their lives irrevocably.
The first big one is Trapped, our favourite Icelandic series, which looks set to return for its second series very soon. In series two, outside Parliament in Reykjavik, a man throws himself at the Minister for Industry, setting fire to them both. Andri Olaffson, now working in Reykjavik, is assigned to the case and quickly learns the attacker was the minister’s twin. Their family’s roots are in the North, in the very area Andri had hoped to leave behind, where his old colleague Hinrika is now Chief of Police. Trouble is brewing in the town, with widespread anger at a power plant, drilling and a proposed aluminium plant. Shortly after Andri’s return, the power plant’s foreman is found dead. Are the two incidents – the murder and the attack in Reykjavik – connected?
Also waiting in the wings is series three of Follow The Money. Across the course of the 10 episodes, the series shifts from white-collar crime in the world of high financing to the more gritty and rough world of street crime and drug dealing, and focuses on two characters from the previous seasons: Nicky and Alf. Nicky has become a heavy-weight kingpin in the Danish underworld, while Alf is in a new job with one of the Police’s gang units, which The Fraud Squad lends out employees to when the narcotics investigators need to crack the kingpin’s accounts and finances. Alf and Nicky are in direct opposition to each other – and when one of them pulls a clever manoeuver, the other counteracts. A new main character is also introduced, Anna, who is the centre of her own arena – a bank. Anna is the proficient but overlooked bank employee, who is suddenly recognized for her abilities in alternative ways. Throughout the season, she will become an important accomplice in the laundering of the criminals’ money.
Finally, another BBC Four staple is confirmed to return.
Series three of Cardinal picks up in autumn and finds a grieving Cardinal torn between obsessive questions about his wife’s death and his loyalty to his partner, Delorme, when a spiralling double murder investigation turns Algonquin Bay into a danger zone, and pushes the two detectives to their limits.
More news on confirmed transmission dates as we get them, as well as news on Spiral.
The Killing Times 