Death Valley is billed as a new comedy in some BBC places and it is easy to see why, even though it is a one hour drama-length and in a drama slot. This light-hearted new Sunday night detective drama set in Wales starring Timothy Spall has lots of comic names beavering away in the background. It is written and created by Paul Doolan (Mammoth, Trollied) and has some familiar sitcom names in the cast – Steffan Rhodri, Dave Coaches from Gavin & Stacey, plays DCI Barry Clarke, Mike Bubbins from Mammoth is Desk Sergeant Tony (a little bit Bill Bailey from Hot Fuzz) and Ghosts' Jim Howick is Constable Atkins (albeit it very briefly in the opener).
But the show is mainly about the chalk and cheese crimecracking relationship between retired actor John Chapel (Timothy Spall) and disarming Welsh detective sergeant Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth). Chapel is a now recluisve (“I’m not a hermit. I went to Swansea last month.”) national treasure after playing Morse-like TV cop Caesar and wouldn't you know it, he has sleuthing skills in real life too.
The first episode finds them trying to work out who killed a local property developer. Clues are dropped in, suspects come and go, jokes are made about TV detective dramas. Chapel dusts off his acting chops to pretend to be a prospective house buyer so that he can scope out one of the properties the victim was involved with. Yes, it is a bit like Jonathan Creek but in Glamorgan. And besides, Jonathan Creek was a long, long time ago.
It's all very gentle, with a cosy, warm blanket vibe as you would expect for this Sunday early evening scheduling. It's just about a cut above the kind of thing you often get on BBC in the midweek afternoons and that's mainly due to a self-aware script, Spall's charisma and Keyworth's puppyish energy. If you want something similar but with ever so slightly more edge there's Columboish Poker Face on Sky, which also doesn't take brutal slayings too seriously.
Each case is conveniently dealt tidily within the hour, plus a few ongoing storylines about Chapel's back story about his wife's death and Mallowan also mourning a lost friend. But despite the guns and pools of congealing blood this is all handled with a feathery touch, reminding us that Spall – who is surely pretty much a national treasure in real life by now – can do comedy or gritty drama with equal ease.
If you enjoyed David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin in Ludwig a second series of that is on the way. In the meantime Death Valley is just the thing fill a Ludwig-shaped hole in your life.
Death Valley, Sunday, BBC One. And all available on iPlayer.
Picture: BBC
