There is a gently sinister air, offset by dialogue that is funny without trying too hard to be so. It would be very easy to make this a dramedy in which many of these people were simple figures of fun, but Dominic Treadwell-Collins and Karen Cogan, who share writing duties, manage to convey real humanity.

When I eventually caught on to who was who and what was what, I found the whole thing quite charming.

Even if Holding is something of a patchwork of different genres, it is usually able to reconcile its most important balance: between comedy and drama. The result is charming and unpretentious.

Holding’s slow pace let it down. Still, the hermetic intrigue of small-town secrets proved hard to resist.

Holding tweaks the small-town murder formula a bit by giving the mystery to a middle-aged, out-of-shape cop who is self-medicating with food instead of booze or drugs. Between that tweak and the performances of the main characters, it makes for an enjoyable, lightly comedic mystery.

There is nothing madly innovative here. ... Nevertheless, it neatly avoids cliche and Oirishness. It has genuine charm, which is to say it is suffused with wit, warmth and compassion.