Jo

Series one, episode one
They used to be called Europuddings: the sort of multinational TV ventures that aim too widely and duly miss most of their targets. And ‘Jo’, from ‘Law and Order’ showrunner Rene Balcer, is a truly scattershot affair. The ever-lugubrious Jean Reno holds things together as the obsessive Parisian cop of the title, fighting crooks, drug addiction and the loneliness of his situation, with a recently deceased wife and a long estrangement from his damaged daughter. But otherwise it’s a mess.

The opening case – a corpse left in a crucifixion pose outside Notre Dame – is workaday. Director Charlotte Sieling seems to have mislaid the tension and atmosphere she brought to ‘The Killing’ and ‘The Bridge’. And, while it’s not unusual for dialogue in a foreign TV series to be spoken in English (‘Zen’, ‘Falcón’), it seems utterly perverse to make an almost entirely British cast speak in cod-American accents. Still, it could find a second life as a Ukip recruiting tool.