The end of The Tunnel - and Lucan - TV reviews

Two notable crime dramas came to an end this week. The Tunnel and Lucan were very different, and in fact illustrate well the range of crime drama. The tenth and final episode of The Tunnel was at times slower-paced than the sometimes frenetic earlier episodes, but it continued to grip me to the end, and the decision to avoid the obvious happy ending struck me as a sound one.

The performance of Stephen Dillane, as the cop whose character flaws had, though he didn't realise it for a long time, set in motion the events that led to the exploits of the "Truth Terrorist" was superb - what a fine actor he is. The convoluted plot required suspension of disbelief on a massive scale, but the storyline did have a crazy logic, and it worked for me, despite innumerable implausibilities. Because of the wildness of the story, I didn't find The Tunnel quite as affecting as Broadchurch, which I thought the best crime drama of the year (so far) but it was still very powerful..

I wasn't sure whether the decision to spin out Lucan to three hours was a good one, but it's a tribute to both Jeff Pope, the scriptwriter, and the excellent cast that it worked, and I didn't lose interest during the second and concluding part of the story. Who knows what Lord Lucan's precise fate was - in this version, he was thrown off a ship when his continued existence became an embarrassment to his posh friends. It can safely be said that he was no great loss, but above all I felt sorry for the parents of the luckless nanny who was killed simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As they said in the screenplay, despite all the fuss about Lucan and his circle, it is wrong for her to be forgotten.

The Tunnel - Sky Atlantic - TV review

The Tunnel, which made a very good start on Sky Atlantic this evening in the first of ten episodes, is an Anglo-French thriiller starring Stephen Dillane as Karl, an amiable British cop, and Clemence Poesy as Elise, his gifted and driven but difficult French counterpart. The case that brings them together starts with the discovery in the Channel Tunnel of a woman's body, exactly at the midpoint of the tunnel. Soon it emerges that the body has been cut in two, and then it turns out that the two halves belong to different women -one a controversial French politician, one a British prostitute.

This story is a re-make, it seems, of The Bridge, the highly acclaimed Scandinavian drama, but as I never saw The Bridge, I'm coming to it fresh. I suspect this is an advantage, given that comparisons are apt to be unflattering to re-makes. I started out by being unsure whether this was a series I'd want to watch beyond the first programme. Suffice to say that by the end, I was very much looking forward to the next instalment.

Dillane is very good, while Poesy is quite compelling, in a totally different role from her part in Birdsong. The script has quite a few witty moments, and some of the filming is quite beautiful. The storyline at this stage is suitably mysterious, with a rather nasty-seeming young British journalist receiving messages from the apparent killer, and enduring a rather memorable near-death experience while trapped in his car.

So, yes, I''ll be tuning in next week. And if The Tunnel maintains the high standard of the first episode, I feel strongly tempted to check out The Bridge as well..