New season crime TV

A new year brings with it new television programming and if you are a fan of crime fiction this year has begun with a host of top series.

On Sky Living, Criminal Minds is now on its ninth series and is as dark and disturbing as ever. It features the Behavioural Analysis Unit of the F.B.I who hunt down serial killers using psychological profiling. Among the dreadful deaths, the light relief comes from the wonderful Kirsten Vangsness as Penny Garcia the team’s IT expert. Her bright clothes and snappy banter are the prefect counterpoint to the serious work of the team as they get inside the twisted mind of the killers.

At the other end of the spectrum is the lightweight but no less enjoyable Castle on Alibi. Much of the success of this show is down to the onscreen relationship between Richard Castle and his now fiancée Kate Beckett. Nathan Fillion as Castle and Stana Katic as Beckett are ably supported by Seamus Dever as Keven Ryan and Jon Huertas as Javier Esposito. The scripts range from terrorists and political shenanigans to plots where zombies or vampires appear to be stalking the streets of New York. It’s a perfect mix and Castle is a show where you can switch off and just enjoy the story.

Silent Witness is back on BBC One and there have been some major changes. After the death of Professor Dalton at the end of the previous series, the Lyell Centre has a new boss, Thomas Chamberlain. In the initial episodes of the series, he has played almost no part in the investigations and appears to have an entirely managerial role. It is a huge shift from the hands-on approach of his predecessor and I’m not sure it works. Another bizarre change is in Dr Nikki Alexander played by Emilia Fox. In previous series she could be seen wearing Laura Ashley-style print dresses and was the very picture of a respectable English woman but this year she’s had a makeover. Wearing tight trousers, her hair cut shorter and a sassier attitude might make her character more American and help may work better with focus groups but it is such a conspicuous change, with no explanation that it’s as if she is a completely different person. The stories so far have been filled with the kind of malevolence and violence as we’ve come to expect from one of the most edgy crime dramas produced by the BBC.

Sherlock’s three-programme run has already come and gone on BBC One. The stories were as complex and twisted as ever, drifting further from the canon of Conan Doyle’s original stories but it doesn’t matter. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have created a brilliantly modern take on the old master. A large part of the success of the show is down to Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman who bring to life the characters of Holmes and Watson in a way that is thoroughly contemporary and yet totally recognisable to those of us who love the books. It is a shame that we are limited to just three programmes per series but the time-constraints on the actors and Moffatt (who both writes and is the lead producer for Doctor Who) mean we have to be content with Sherlock in small doses.

2014 has started well, let’s hope there are plenty more delights along the way.