The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: the Murder in Angel Lane

Paddy Considine is back in his rather fetching stovepipe hat for another installment of this murky Victorian policier. His fragile, intuitive lawman Mr Whicher isn’t in the force anymore – he’s been discharged on the grounds of ‘mental unfitness’. But when he prevents Olivia Colman’s prim Miss Spencer from being robbed in a dank, dirty London pub (although quite what an upstanding citizen like Whicher is doing in there in the first place is never really addressed), he finds himself dragged into another case.

Whicher, of course, has police contacts to help him. But can they really be relied upon under duress? And in the light of his issues, can Whicher handle the emotional practicalities of a case that takes him in and out of an insane asylum? The plotting is nothing out of the ordinary but, as usual, Considine decidedly is – an endlessly watchable mixture of vulnerability, conviction and furious intensity. Involving Sunday night fare.