Big Time for the Small Screen

(Above) A trailer for the latest—and last—series of Happy Valley.

Sarah Lancashire’s much-anticipated third season of the BBC One TV series Happy Valley debuted on New Year’s Day in the UK, and it’s hoped that U.S. audiences might soon see it turn up as well on Netflix (though no broadcast date has yet been confirmed). However, that’s only one of myriad crime dramas set to premiere in the coming months, both in Europe and America. The Killing Times today posted what it calls “a terrifying amount to look forward to”—almost 100 shows, both new and returning productions.

In addition to Happy Valley, that latter category includes Vera, Unforgotten (with Sinéad Keenan replacing Nicola Walker as co-star), Grace, Grantchester, the final season of Endeavour, Van der Valk, Dalgliesh, Perry Mason, Candice Renoir, The Chelsea Detective, and True Detective (this time set in Alaska, and starring Jodie Foster).

They’ll be joined by newcomers such as Blue Lights, about a mother in her 40s who leaves her post as a social worker to join the Police Service of Northern Ireland; The Gallow’s Pole, based on a book by Benjamin Myers and following “a gang of weavers and land-workers [who] embark upon a revolutionary criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history”; Mystery Road: Origin, a prequel to the Australian show starring Aaron Pedersen; Six Four, inspired by the 2012 novel of that same name by Japanese author Hideo Yokoyama; The Good Ship Murder, “set aboard a luxury cruise liner touring everyone’s favourite Mediterranean holiday hotspots” and leading to “a wave of murder mysteries”; Faking Hitler, in which a reporter falls for the story of a phony Adolf Hitler diary; White House Plumbers, “a five-part series that tells the true story of how [Richard] Nixon’s own political saboteurs and Watergate masterminds, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, accidentally toppled the presidency they were trying to protect”; The Breakthrough, about the original use of genealogical research to solve a murder—really two, in Sweden; and Sophie Rundle’s The Diplomat, focusing on efforts by the UK’s Barcelona Consul “to protect British nationals who find themselves in trouble in the Catalan city.”

(Left) Sophie Rundle is slated to star in Alibi-TV’s The Diplomat.

There’s no mention here of Acorn’s The Brokenwood Mysteries, which has been renewed for a ninth series, or Prime Video’s Spanish historical whodunit, A Private Affair, which was one of my favorite finds of 2022, and with any luck will be back for a sophomore season. Nor does The Killing Times list all of the American programs kicking off in early 2023, among them Will Trent, based on Karin Slaughter’s books following Special Agent Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez), and Poker Face, the first televised offering from Knives Out director Rian Johnson, starring Natasha Lyonne as peripatetic private investigator Charlie Cale. But then, doing so would well exceed 100 entries.

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Along similar lines, Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph is out today with news regarding three mystery dramas coming to PBS-TV this year: the third season of Vienna Blood, premiering on January 8; Ridley, starring Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar and coming in June; and the police procedural D.I. Ray, to be broadcast in July (but made available in February through the member benefit service PBS Passport).