Lucy Mangan

More shocking than the police neglect and stupidity is the lack of comprehension – at times seeming to border on outright contempt – that David Green, head of homicide and major crime, Scotland 2019-23 appears to exhibit towards the woman who handed them the case on a platter.

Widow’s Peak is rich and wonderful. Grownup, funny, scary, true – Mare of Easttown meets Schitt’s Creek, but with something else that makes it singular.

Gadd’s drama is brave and blazing. It leaves you with that rare and precious feeling that everyone involved – Gadd, of course, who has once again pulled out his viscera, spread them over the page and taken a scalpel to every bloody organ, but every actor too (Bell is on career-best form and then some here) – has given us the very best of themselves.

It’s entertaining enough, undemanding fare, but you might wish you had chosen other ways to spend your four hours.

Overall, Beef feels like an entertaining potboiler rather than the dark march towards truth that the original was. Not enough meat on the bones.

It’s got charm, and it’s endearing if you’re not allergic to the schmaltz just begging to break through the surface. But, with the three main talents involved, it could have been so much more.

The only duty is to recombine things well, to keep them fresh and funny as well as comforting, and it’s fully discharged here over eight swift, sure and never-too-schmaltzy episodes.

Long before the end of its nearly 10-hour run you begin to feel the limitations. Ames and Turner adapted The Miniature Wife from a short story of the same name by Manuel Gonzales, but they needed to bring a lot more to the table to justify this kind of run time. Lindy might not agree, but quite often shorter is better.

Though it is slightly leavened by a little humour, but mostly by the innate hope offered by the age of the protagonists, The Testaments is, like its predecessor, a study in groupthink – in power, corruption and the ease with which ordinary people acquiesce to evil practices.

It manages its usual fine balance between satire and story. The parallels with modern America are plentiful and terrifying.