Need Something New to Watch?

My wife and I watched the final episode of Unforgotten, Season 4, last weekend on PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! If you haven’t seen those half-dozen installments yet, fear not: I shan’t spoil the surprises, except to mention that Nicola Walker, who played Detective Chief Inspector Cassie Stuart, won’t be returning for the promised Season 5. She’s already decamped to Annika, a new program on the British pay-TV channel Alibi that’s based on a BBC Radio 4 drama titled Annika Stranded, which has starred Walker ever since 2013.

As Wikipedia says, this six-part, small-screen Annika “follows [Detective Inspector] Annika Strandhed as she takes over a new Marine Homicide Unit in Scotland.” Reviewing Episode 1, The Killing Times observes: “What’s different and what makes Annika an engaging watch are two things. Nicola Walker is, not surprisingly for an actor playing a character for a number of years, on supreme form, and it feels like Annika as a character fits her like a glove. She’s natural, warm, and funny, too. The other dimension this has is the fourth wall, or the smashing of it. Annika regularly talks to us, the audience, and gives insights and even tells jokes.” Whether this program will someday reach U.S. audiences is anyone’s guess.

In the meantime, we can all tune in for The Defeated (aka Shadowplay), an eight-episode historical crime drama debuting this week on Netflix. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) says it’s set in Berlin, Germany, during the summer of 1946, when that recently war-ravaged city was “in chaos—there are no laws, and everyone is either a criminal or a survivor.” Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights, Waco) stars as Max McLaughlin, a Brooklyn cop who “arrives to help create a police force and take down the Al Capone of Berlin, Dr. Werner ‘Englemache’ Gladow [Sebastian Koch].” Unofficially, though, McLaughlin is also “on a private mission to track down his missing brother [Moritz, played by Logan Marshall-Green], who’s been killing former Nazis in hiding.”

The Web site Movie Recipe (yeah, I’d never heard of that before this week either) notes that, while McLaughlin pursues Gladow, “unbeknownst to him, the American Vice Consul is using Max to gather intelligence and stop Russia from making any inroads.” Partnering with McLaughlin is Elsie Garten (Nina Hoss), a rookie “torn apart by war, rape and back-breaking work,” but “street smart and full of dark humor.” Helping to complete this series’ cast are Michael C. Hall, the lovely Tuppence Middleton, and Benjamin Sadler.

Fortunately, a second season is already in the works.

Click here to find a Defeated trailer and links to its episodes.

READ MORE: “Annika Review—Nicola Walker As a Maritime Murder Cop Is Sure to Reel You In,” by Stuart Jeffries (The Guardian).