Van der Valk (My Rating 5) & Unforgotten (My Rating 4+)

Two Great Series with New Seasons

PBS is now showing the latest seasons of two excellent detective shows, Van der Valk and Unforgotten. PBS Passport offers an opportunity to catch up with the previous seasons as well. Both can help make up for the dwindling daylight of Fall.

ITV produces Van der Valk, loosely based on the Nicolas Freeling novels of the titular Commissaris Piet Van der Valk of the Dutch National Police’s major crime squad. The show is set in Amsterdam and began in 2020. An earlier series from the 1970-90s stuck closer to the books. (I’ve not watched it.) The current version is sharp, fast moving and quirky, largely due to the leading characters and great actors the series assembled. Marc Warren plays Van der Valk as a constantly moving, silent predator constrained, however, by his strong commitment to right and wrong, if not always by police procedure. He heads a team of capable subordinates including his equally strong deputy Inspecteur Lucienne Hassell, played by Maimie McCoy. A particularly standout character is Hendrik Davie, a flamboyant police forensic pathologist played with great panache by Darrell D'Silva.

Van der Valk and his team often gather in a nearby coffee bar to talk over the case and sometimes get help from the owner and Homeless Frank. The crimes are not run of the mill but may offer macabre and charged elements of high crime and politics. As this British made mystery is set in the Netherlands, where policemen carry weapons, the action may include their use. Highly recommended, rating five.

Unforgotten has been around longer and is now is its fifth season. For the first four, the incomparable Nicola Walker played DCI Cassie Stuart, the lead detective in a team specializing in cold cases, sometimes very cold. She left in 2021 (but has popped up again in Annika, as the head of a Glasgow marine homicide squad). In season five, DCI Jessica 'Jessie' James, played by Sinéad Keenan, takes over the team assisted by – despite initial misgivings – DI Sunil 'Sunny' Khan, played very soberly by Sanjeev Bhaskar (a British comedian). The series takes the form of six 45-minute episodes that unfold the crime and investigation. Usually the team must first find a way to identify the victim. They use forensics, dig through records and trace whatever leads they turn up while the two chief detectives deal also with their personal issues. While all police shows now go often deep into the background stories and personal issues of the leading characters – including a bit in Van Der Valk – there is a bit too much pathos in Unforgotten for me. This is the reason I give it only 4+ though still very recommended.