Annika

Annika manages to step up its game in season two, battening down the hatches with fresh, improved scripts. It’s no surprise that Walker’s as effortlessly entertaining a lead as she is.

I don’t know what crimes are to be investigated next by this ludicrous drain on Caledonian public finances, but the dialogue is so droll and the performances so charming I’m in for what fisherfolk call the long haul.

A little perfunctoriness in the mysteries can be excused, though, given the overall pleasure to be had from Walker’s performance.

This felt like a TV show still finding its groove. If it does, Annika has all the makings of a Vera-like long-runner if (and it is a big if) an actor as in-demand as Walker is happy to remain on board.

As the six-part season continues, one hopes the monologues to camera are dialled down and future storylines less far-fetched.

As a whodunit, it is disappointingly pedestrian: clues and suspects and red herrings reveal themselves one by one, but are neatly dealt with in minutes. The show needs to focus less on the clever conceits and more on the plots.

Ultimately this is a series made for the Alibi channel in conjunction with America’s Masterpiece Theatre. It is thus strait-jacketed from its inception: it must get from body found to crime solved in an hour, and it is also duty bound to wallow in tourist board aerial shots of the Scottish Highlands.