Arne Dahl

This is one of the lean weeks of television, as foretold by scripture. One of those weeks where no amount of channel flipping will yield anything that is both new and interesting. Yes, Scott And Bailey continues its gripping run on ITV (Wednesdays at 9pm), and if you haven’t already yielded to its televisual charms I urge you to do so with all possible dispatch.

It offers some of the most compelling storylines and affecting performances of any mainstream detective show in recent memory. And while the sheer number of women in senior police jobs stretches credulity a touch, it’s a welcome turnabout from traditionally blokey cop shows.

Meanwhile, the BBC persists with Ben Elton’s jaw-droppingly weak The Wright Way (Tuesdays at 10.35pm) despite some of the most uniformly negative notices I think I’ve ever seen. Whenever I’m having a bad day at work I sneak a look at the desperate faces of The Wright Way’s unlucky cast and remind myself that there’s always someone worse off than me.

And, after all, much as I complain about thin TV schedules, I did find something that I could commend to your attention. Arne Dahl (BBC Four, Saturday at 9pm) is another one of those Scandinavian detective dramas that we Brits have come to love.

Based on a series of novels by Swedish novelist and literary critic Jan Arnald (Arne Dahl is a somewhat imperfect anagram of his name) the feature-length dramas emphasise the team effort involved in solving major crimes. It’s by no means as instantly winning as The Killing, partly because instead of a single figure like Sarah Lund that we can identify with, the Arne Dahl stories feature a sprawling cast of characters, switching between them as the story demands.

Part of the success of Scandi-crime shows is that we are forced by the subtitles to pay attention to the screen and not tinker with iPads or knitting or TV dinners while we’re watching.

Arne Dahl doubles the level of concentration required because of its kaleidoscope of characters.

On the upside, this week’s episode, To The Top Of The Mountain, involves the murder of a Swedish drugs squad investigator while he is on holiday in Holland. It transpires that the lingua franca of European police is English, so in the bits where the Swedish and Dutch detectives are having a chat we can safely look down to check on our Twitter or bootees or duck à l’orange for a minute or two.

The Arne Dahl stories are all feature-length two-parters, so there’s quite an investment of time involved in fi nding out whodunnit. But if you have the attention span for them they really are captivating, enjoyable shows. And you might as well give them a try. After all, there’s not much else on.