Why is there such a buzz about..?

CRIME

BRITBOX DRAMA

There’s the Edinburgh promoted by Visit Scotland: a stunning, culturally rich Unesco World Heritage Site. And then there’s Irvine Welsh’s Edinburgh: a dark city peopled by shuffling junkies and cocaine crazed cops, perverts and dead-eyed psychopaths. Crime, a drama co-scripted by Welsh and inspired by his novel of the same name, is bracingly old-school. It’s not having any truck with the recently fashionable trope of the ‘sexy’ serial killer. John Simm’s bad guy is a repulsive monster who will make your flesh creep. And it features the sort of ‘traditional’ coppering where detectives would rather give a nonce a slap than politely enquire about their preferred pronouns. Where even the young detective sergeant, Amanda Drummond (Joanna Vanderham), who lectures her intense partner DI Ray Lennox (Dougray Scott, above) on his unconscious sexism, can enjoy the simple pleasure of flinging a pan of boiling stock in a wrong ’un’s face. This all-too-short six-episode series leaves you hoping for more.