A gripping crime drama such as The Tourist on a cold winter’s night is about as good as TV gets, and BBC One is the master at delivering them – so what good crime dramas are coming soon on the Beeb?
Much as we love the football and tennis dominating the TV schedules over the summer, many of us are hankering for an edge-of-seat crime drama to take the place of Line of Duty, Baptiste or Luther.
And BBC One is beavering away as we speak.
Here’s ED!’s pick of good crime dramas on BBC One in early 2022.
Read more: Gone For Good on Netflix: New crime drama from creator of Safe and The Stranger
Read more: BBC releases new images of Stephen Graham in dark period drama The North Water
The Tourist
The Tourist is currently airing on Sunday nights and is mostly delighting viewers, who are particularly enjoying the chemistry between Jamie Dornan and Aussie actress Danielle Macdonald,
If you’ve been living under a rock since New Year’s Eve, the drama follows a British man, known only as The Man, who finds himself being pursued by a vast tank truck trying to drive him off the road.
Cue him waking up in hospital with no memory of who he is, and a string of shadowy figures from his past intent on killing him.
But why? What has he done to attract their attention? And what’s he hiding?
If you love a show binge, The Tourist is available in its entirety on BBC iPlayer.
Four Lives, BBC One
Another for those who might have been slow to enter the new year! Four Lives aired on BBC One this week, stripped across three consecutive nights – and it is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
Stephen Merchant transforms into real-life serial killer Stephen Port in BBC One’s upcoming factual drama Four Lives.
The series tells the horrifying case from the perspective of the families of Stephen Port’s four victims and their fight for justice.
The police investigation was widely criticised at the time.
Sheridan Smith plays Sarah Sak, the mother of 23-year-old victim Anthony Walgate.
Jaime Winstone also stars.
Stephen Port is a former chef born in Southend, who raped and killed four men between 2014 and 2015.
He met his victims via dating and hook-up apps and used drugs such as GHB to sedate them.
The English
Emily Blunt stars in the Western-style revenge series The English.
She stars as Cornelia Locke, who arrives in the new and wild landscape of the West, desperate to wreak revenge on the man she believes responsible for the death of her son.
This sounds like a corker.
Filming on The English is confirmed to have begun in Spain.
Rafe Spall (The Salisbury Poisonings), Tom Hughes (Victoria) and Ciaran Hinds (The Woman in Black) are also attached to the project.
Writer-director Hugo Blick describes the upcoming series as “a thrilling, romantic, epic horse-opera”.
Hugo previously wrote 2014’s Golden Globe-winning drama The Honourable Woman starring Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Blue Lights
Blue Lights is an original police drama created by Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn, the writers of The Salisbury Poisonings.
It is the story of probationary police officers working in contemporary Belfast – a city in which being a frontline response cop comes with a unique set of pressures and dangers.
As they learn the basics of their profession, our new officers have to come to terms with a constant threat.
In this often chaotic environment our characters have just a few crucial months to make it as police officers.
Blue Lights is inspired by the experiences of serving police officers in Northern Ireland.
Writers Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn say: “Belfast is our home town, and to be able to write a show set in the city we know and love is one of the great privileges of our lives.
“It’s a real joy to be bringing a major BBC drama back home.”
The series is currently in development.
Strike
Series five of Strike is based on the book Troubled Blood, which came out in September 2020.
The crime drama follows war veteran turned private detective Cormoran Strike as he solves brutal murders with the help of his trusted assistant Robin Ellacott.
There have currently been four series starring Tom Burke as Cormoran Strike, and Holliday Grainger as Robin Ellacott.
These include The Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm, Career of Evil and Lethal White.
The series is based on Robert Galbraith’s books (aka J.K. Rowling).
Fingers crossed Strike: Troubled Blood will get the TV treatment any day now.
Good crime dramas BBC One: Better
Better is a thrilling redemption story set in Leeds, “using the landscape of the city and surrounding countryside as a backdrop to what becomes an epic battle for one woman’s soul”.
After a family tragedy is narrowly averted, a corrupt police detective undergoes a painful moral awakening and decides to put right 20 years of wrongdoing…
But satisfying her newfound conscience won’t be straightforward.
She slowly realises that her redemption will only be complete once she brings down the powerful gangster she has worked for all this time, a man she helped rise to power, and has come to love like a brother.
The Control Room
The Control Room is a gripping new drama which tells the story of Gabe, an ordinary man who works as an emergency call handler for the Scottish Ambulance Service in Glasgow.
His world is turned upside down when he receives a desperate life-and-death call from a woman who appears to know him.
With Gabe under pressure to work out who she is, he makes a decision that threatens to have devastating consequences.
Good crime dramas BBC One: Wolf
Wolf is based on Mo Hayder’s acclaimed Jack Caffery novels.
In an isolated house in the country, a family find themselves the victims of a terrifying psychopath’s cruel games.
Meanwhile DI Jack Caffery obsessively tries to find evidence to convict the neighbour he believes murdered his eight year-old brother in the 90s.
When these two narratives collide, it’s a race against time in this emotionally powerful, nail-biting and deeply disturbing crime-thriller/horror mash-up.
Rules of the Game
Rules of the Game is a gripping new four-part thriller about sexual politics in the modern workplace.
Maxine Peake stars as Sam, a hard-headed manager at a family run business in the North West.
When new HR Director Maya begins her job at Fly, she tries to shake up the old-fashioned lad culture and begins investigating historic cases of misconduct.
But Sam bristles at the suggestion of institutional bias against women – that was all in the past, and things are different now that she’s in charge.
However, when Sam arrives at work one day to find a dead body in the office reception, she is forced to reckon with not only the murky behaviour in the present, but murderous secrets from the past as well.
Rules of the Game begins on Tuesday, January 11. Yes, just TWO DAYS, people!
We’ll keep you posted on these BBC series over the coming months.
Are you a fan of crime dramas? Leave us a comment on our Facebook page @EntertainmentDailyFix.