Suspect

While not quite as intense as its first season, the second season of Suspect is still very watchable because of the well-paced half-hour episodes and a cast that can handle its tell-don’t-show storytelling.

Viewers expecting a more traditional crime thriller may well be thrown off by the theatrical feel of the series format, with a new pairing of actors each episode. But the show's central whodunnit and the short episode lengths (around 20 minutes each) both work in its favour.

Outlandish things can, and sometimes should, happen. But the scriptwriters Joy Wilkinson and David Allison have made parts of Suspect so melodramatic and shrill that there are moments when it feels like a Charlie Brooker-style satire on the genre. The loud, intrusive music also hinders rather than helps.

It's a performance of extremes. I do like the structure basically two-hander plays in 30-minute segments with Nesbitt the constant even if sometimes a scene change was desperately needed. Maybe it would work better on stage. The cast is quality, but my problem is that Danny is unlikeable. ... I struggled to find anyone interesting here.

Nesbitt and Joely Richardson deliver their lines as if they’re getting to grips with a foreign language. ... Introducing one suspect per half hour episode could work well in theory, if only the show was better.

In a potentially uneven series, there may be some standout episodes (it’s hard to imagine Duff not being captivating) but so far, Suspect is both very serious and quite silly at the same time.

It has a hallucinatory quality. The film-makers might say that’s deliberate, but it feels more like a side-effect of how badly this thing has been put together.