Turning the Dial

Amid all of my (mostly self-imposed) reading responsibilities, I have not been keeping up with what television offers. Only recently, for instance, did I finally tune in the seven-episode, 2024 AppleTV+ adaptation of Laura Lippman’s novel Lady in the Lake. And last night, I began watching Season 3 of Prime Video’s Reacher, which stars the terrific Alan Ritchson and is based on Lee Child’s seventh Jack Reacher novel, Persuader. I’m hoping this latest eight-episode run of Reacher will combine humor, character development, and action in a manner similar to the balance achieved in Season 1.

Meanwhile, debuts steam ahead (or should that be “stream” ahead) without a moment’s concern for my schedule:

• Agatha Christie’s 1944 crime novel Towards Zero has been translated into a star-spangled three-part small-screen drama set to commence showing on the UK’s BBC One on Sunday, March 2. BritBox will carry it in the States, but at a not-yet-specified date.

• A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, with the captivating Lucy Boynton playing an “infamous murderess, the last woman to be hanged in the UK” in the mid-1950s), is headed to British boob tubes on Wednesday, March 5. I just read, though, that this four-part historical drama is already available via BritBox on this side of the pond! (See what I mean about not staying current?)

• Amanda Seyfried stars in Long Bright River as a Philadelphia police officer “determined to track down her missing, drug-addicted sister, while simultaneously untangling the mystery of who’s murdering young prostitutes in the district she patrols.” All eight installments of this show, based on Liz Moore’s 2020 novel of the same name, will drop on streamer Peacock come Thursday, March 13.

• The 2024 thriller A Remarkable Place to Die, starring Chelsea Preston Crawford as a police detective who, to quote Telly Visions, “returns to her home town of Queensland in New Zealand, which she both loves and hates,” debuted on Acorn TV on February 17. Four 90-minute installments will stream on Mondays through March 10.

• Last but certainly not least, British broadcaster ITV has commissioned a fifth season of Ben Miller’s Professor T before that mystery’s fourth series has even aired (on PBS-TV here in the States).