Death Valley evaluation – Timothy Spall’s high quality new detective drama is a comfortable, witty pleasure

By some curious dint of arithmetic, one in all lifestyles’s biggest pleasures is coming throughout one thing this is just a bit bit higher than it must be. It’s such rarity, one of these deal with – and to pessimists, one of these surprise to the machine – that it turns into disproportionately, even though nonetheless essentially, pleasant.

Such a phenomenon is Death Valley, a brand new Sunday night time comedy drama wherein an beginner sleuth is helping the police resolve crimes in a bucolic village – in most cases English, this time Welsh – with an astronomically excessive homicide price and a suspect below each gooseberry bush and felt hat. So a long way, so Gently cum Midsomer cum Marple cum Agatha Raisin cum pull-up-a-chair-and-a-teacake-and-enjoy.

And it does hit that snug spot. Timothy Spall, who I believe used to be on the lookout for a option to recharge his actorly batteries after hanging each little bit of energy he had into his efficiency as Peter Farquhar in 2023’s harrowing The Sixth Commandment, stars because the beginner sleuth, John Chapel. Chapel is a retired actor (if there ever is one of these factor, darling!) who made his identify in a long-running police procedural collection as its eponymous detective, Caesar. The first episode opens, as the primary episodes of latest snug crime collection will have to, with a case so transparent it couldn’t perhaps be the rest: lifeless belongings developer slumped over his table, a gun in his hand, clearly having killed himself.

But is it obtrusive? Why would a person making plans one of these factor have a lunch in his diary for day after today and a vacation booked for Dubai? DS Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth), treading the wonderful line between perky and infuriating with nary a wobble (Chapel calls her “scintillatingly irritating”, which is each an excellent description and a mark of the writing high quality), reckons she will have to no less than ask the neighbours in the event that they noticed the rest suspicious at the day he died. As a devotee of Caesar, she is awestruck when the primary door she bangs on is spoke back through none instead of Chapel himself. And Chapel is aware of it used to be homicide. How? “Because actors observe.” The sufferer used to be an orderly guy – a gunshot used to be too messy. And as a result of “action is character” – and the sufferer used to be a thoughtful guy, who designed bespoke birthday playing cards for his cleaner’s son and would by no means have left her to search out his frame when she used to be due in day after today.

Janie visits the deceased’s high-maintenance spouse – “I shouldn’t cry. Just had my lids done” – to determine if he had any enemies. “Any beef with anyone? Doesn’t have to be big beef. Small beef. Mince?” Not even a meatball’s value, is the answer.

And we’re off. A couple of purple herrings smell the air however Chapel and Janie stay undeterred for lengthy of their hunt for clues. (“I’m the inspiration,” says Chapel to Janie as he brings his actorly powers to endure at the proof. “You’re the perspiration.”)

Why would a person who fired an electrician for wonky socket paintings in a display house no longer additionally fireplace a decorator for lacking a patch of wall? Why would a lady with a love of conventional tea towels need to purchase a new-build? A cancelled bacon supply right here, an empty foxglove mattress there, a possibility statement from a kid of unsure parentage over the way in which and shortly the threads are drawn in combination to search out the manner, reason, alternative – and the assassin (through the top of the hour). Their subsequent journey comes to a member of Janie’s mum’s strolling workforce demise in an obvious fall (wager what!) and is value staring at for plenty of causes, no longer least Mum’s description of the lifeless girl: “Too thin by half. And stubborn eyes.”

Within every case state of affairs are the longer arcs involving Chapel’s grief for his overdue spouse and Janie’s struggles over the lack of her absolute best good friend, which season the jollity with one thing a bit extra piquant.

So, it’s Midsomer Murders –with jokes. It’s Rosemary and Thyme – however excellent. Or a pastoral Old Dogs New Tricks, in case you desire. Take your select. It’s additionally witty and a laugh and bounces in conjunction with sufficient verve to get you previous any footling objections you need to both shape or content material ahead of they may be able to make their manner from mind to mouth. Not the whole lot must be The Wire. Sometimes you’ll simply chill out and take pleasure in a distinct factor accomplished really well certainly.