When did we decide we preferred our television detectives sunny-side up rather than served in the traditional hard-boiled fashion? At whatever point it happened, we nowadays live, beyond all hope of escape, in a cosy crime purgatory, where murder is a green light for jolly japes, and the only good cop is a whimsical one.
Cosy crime isn’t new. It extends back to Agatha Christie in the 1920s and even to Wilkie Collins in the 19th century. But goodness, is it having a moment now – whether manifesting as cosy crime in the sun (Death in Paradise), cosy crime marinated in the cheesy values of 1980s US television (Poker Face) or cosy crime in upper-west-side Manhattan (Only Murders in the Building).
Alas, like a killer driven to ever more desperate extremes in the hope of attracting attention, the genre has lately arrived at the “trying-too-hard” stage of its cycle, as evidenced by the distractingly offbeat Death Valley (BBC One, Sunday) – a capricious caper that cannot make up its mind whether to celebrate the tropes of the milieu or poke fun at them.
The setting of small-town Wales is in the classic British tradition of dramedies taking place off the beaten track (see also: Shetland, Vera, Midsommar Murder or, in ancient times, Wicklow-set Ballykissangel). It stars veteran Timothy Spall as a reclusive actor once famous for playing a television detective (one gathers his character was a cross between Taggart and Bergerac). He’s content in his solitude, with only his cat for the company – until a local bigwig seemingly shoots himself, and the police are called in.
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Spall earned his reputation with gritty character parts in unsentimental State of the Nation films such as Secrets and Lies by Mike Leigh (who would go on to cast him as the painter JMW Turner in a 2014 biopic). However, it is whimsy all the way in Death Valley, where his character, John Chapel, quickly joins forces with local police officer Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth).
They’re an odd pairing though you wonder how much of this is on purpose and how much has to do with the baffling decision to make Janie a devoted dispenser of gags. She’s forever firing off pithy observations and commenting on life around her, whether or not anyone else has asked her to upend the contents of her brain all over their conversation. Her backstory contains its share of loss, and her outré personality is presumably a coping mechanism – unfortunately, Death Valley doesn’t make any of this feel plausible.
For instance, in an early scene where she and John meet in a coffee shop to compare notes, she explains that she’s reading an online piece about “washed-up celebs and what they look like today”. She reveals that John is mentioned. But when he inquires further, she says she’s only joking. Well, that’s going to bring him around to her side, isn’t it?
The actual mystery is solid. The dead businessman, Carwyn Rees, did not, in fact, take his own life. He was done in by people close to him amid murky dealings in his building development company and an illicit affair (or three) on the side. Here, Death Valley holds up – in so far as you can understand the motives of the perpetrators and the means by which the ghastly deed was carried out. That sets it apart from popular rivals such as Death in Paradise, where the big reveal about that week’s murder invariably raises more questions than it answers.
The problem is ultimately one of tone. Death Valley wants to be flighty as anything and also have the crunchy qualities of a solid sleuth fest. It is well-intentioned and thoughtfully plotted while Spall effortlessly commands the screen as a fading luvvy who just so happens to be a top-rank crime buster in real life. But some things simply don’t go well together. Now we know that this category includes off-beam humour and dark deeds in small-town Wales.
The six-part series is on BBC One on Sundays from 8.15pm
