Det Supt Simm’s back on the Brighton beat

John Simm returns as the troubled but steely detective Roy Grace. But a cosy Sunday night whodunnit this isn’t...

Det Supt Roy Grace (John Simm) is something of a mystery to his colleagues and friends. His sidekick, DS Glenn Branson (Richie Campbell, above left with Simm), temporarily staying with him during a period of domestic turbulence, says: ‘You don’t even have Netflix, Roy. I mean, all your DVDs are spaghetti westerns. You don’t have an XBox or a PS5. Seriously – what do you do when you’re at home?’ Although perhaps that says more about Branson than Grace.

As we’ve seen in the previous two series, Roy Grace broods a lot about his missing wife, Sandy, who disappeared years ago. Even though he has begun the legal process of having her declared dead, he is now in a new relationship and is, in theory at least, trying to move on.

When he is at work, however, he’s a dedicated investigator, solving puzzling and shocking crimes in the Brighton and Hove area. In the first of this new set of three feature-length episodes based on the best-selling novels by Peter James, a young woman, Mimi, is raped in a posh hotel after attending a police officer’s leaving do.

Her description of the attack reminds Grace of an unsolved ten-year-old case: that of the Brighton Prowler, who snatched victims off the street and bundled them into his white van. He then stole his victims’ lipstick after assaulting them. Mimi was in a hotel, so this is a very different modus operandi, but her lipstick was also stolen. Could it be the same perpetrator?

When it is discovered that some of the statement files from the original inquiry have gone missing, Grace has to re-interview the only victim still around and learns some hard truths about the ‘contempt’ with which the police treated her. ‘All the detective wanted to know was how short my skirt was, if I was wearing any make-up, how much I’d had to drink,’ she says.

There’s a strong theme of misogyny in this episode. When a distinctly dodgy cab driver whom we see being very creepy with female fares is interviewed by the cops, he suggests he might have been targeted by ‘feminists’ because ‘they wouldn’t know a good time if it bit ’em’.

Grace is very much from the if-it-ain’tbroke-don’t-fix-it school of crime drama, with a dedicated but troubled cop who is determined to bring the bad guys to justice. It’s not trying to push the envelope or to do anything unexpected, and Simm plays the lead with elegant understatement.

That said, it can be surprisingly gritty for Sunday night TV, and this episode in particular contains some disturbing details. If you’re expecting a cosy, Christie-esque whodunnit, look elsewhere.