Adrian Dunbar's singing detective brings the jazz, but the script hits a flat note

Telegraph

11 hours ago

The singing detective is back. If you remember the first series of Ridley (ITV1), starring Adrian Dunbar as a retired DI drafted in to assist his old force, it won't be for the plots. The memorable thing about this crime drama is that, once per episode, Dunbar breaks into song. This isn't quite as weird as if, say, Brenda Blethyn's Vera donned a spangly dress and did a rumba every time she cracked a case, but it's definitely out of the ordinary.
Dunbar, who can hold a tune, asked for this element to be added to the show. 'I wanted there to be something interesting about Ridley beyond the police work', he explained. So Alex Ridley co-owns a jazz club in a quiet Lancashire town, where he croons the night away in melancholy fashion – sometimes with songs by Sheffield balladeer Richard Hawley, sometimes with standards.
Who knows whether it was the musical interludes or Dunbar's heartthrob status – the drama was first commissioned when viewers were going potty for Ted Hastings in Line of Duty – but series one pulled in an average of 6 million viewers, which is pretty good going these days. So here we are with series two, each episode a self-contained, two-hour whodunnit.
Dunbar was right, though, when he said there needed to be something interesting going on. The storylines are achingly mundane. I watched a preview of the first episode a week ago and the two hours passed pleasantly enough, but I have since forgotten almost everything about it. Which might say something about my memory, but also about the writing of Ridley.
There was a robbery of a jewellery shop, a hit and run, a glamorous blonde woman who ran an equestrian centre, and a police mole. Each episode starts well as it sets out the crime, but soon melts into a puddle. And there isn't enough of the personal stuff. Ridley seems to have feelings for Annie (Julie Graham), who runs the jazz club, but if their relationship keeps developing at this rate, they may have their first kiss around 2028.
Alex Ridley is a very boring TV detective. Oddly, that's the best thing about the show. Ridley is not a maverick (if he were, they'd have cast James Nesbitt in the title role). He is experienced, dependable and calm in a crisis. When he gets a call asking him to come down to the station, he always says yes because he's just quietly pottering around at home in front of a nice view.
He has the requisite baggage – a dead wife and daughter, killed in an arson attack – and the requisite strong female sidekick (Bronagh Waugh). But once you've cast off the cliches, the strength of Dunbar's performance is that he acts in a recognisably human way. There is something reassuringly normal about him, and Ridley is a calming comfort watch. It just needs to devote as much care to the storylines as it does to the jazz.