Critic Reviews

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.

Are you going to be OK, someone asks? “I mean, that’s a huge question,” she says. It’s really the question we all face every day. With its dreamy theme music and blustery setting, “Annika” finds the bleak, human comedy in that.

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

The central case is gripping enough and ensures the 50-minute runtime passes at a fairly zippy pace, while the performances are solid, if rather unremarkable, from a reliable cast of actors who aren't always helped by some occasionally unconvincing dialogue.

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

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.

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.

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.