25-05-2025
Death Valley, review: Timothy Spall's witty sleuth proves a rival for Ludwig
The warning signs are all there – jaunty pizzicato strings, delightful rural setting, a quirky, cranky detective paired off with a chalk-and-cheese youthful sidekick. There is even a Death in the title, suggesting that Death Valley (BBC One) not only looks a bit like all the other cheerful come-for-the-location, stay-for-the-murders crime dramas on TV (ie. Death in Paradise, Midsomer Murders) but that it is merely the same formula set in Wales. Many great actors play TV detectives in their later years for a phone-it-in gig and a pension. Surely this is Timothy Spall doing the same?
Well sort of, but also not at all. Death Valley is undoubtedly another cosy sleuther, one cut from familiar cloth, but it is at least a very good one. Spall plays John Chapel, a retired actor who used to star as a Poirot-style mind-machine on a TV crime drama. When a much-loathed local real estate tycoon is found dead at his desk, the local police, in the form of DS Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth), interview the neighbours. There Mallowan chances upon a gone-to-seed Chapel and lo and behold, an unlikely (but in TV land, completely inevitable) crime-solving duo is born.
Rather than pretend that any of this is new, Death Valley is sensible enough to acknowledge all of the clichés and work with them. Paul Doolan's (Mammoth, Trollied) script is pin-sharp throughout, poking fun at the genre by using extracts from Caesar, the series in which Chapel starred in his heyday. These shows, as one of the cops on Death Valley even says at one point, are all the same, but there's a reason for that. As the BBC's recent success with Ludwig illustrates, people love a puzzle. So the six episodes of Death Valley stick to a case-of-the-week format, with John and Janie getting better and better at solving them as their relationship evolves. Doolan's script, which is very funny throughout, is the cherry on the icing on the cake (and he seems to love an over-extended metaphor, of which I approve).
Youth and age and amateurs and pros and good cops and bad cops – everything has been done (to death) in crime drama. It's unlikely that anyone tuning in to Death Valley will be expecting, or wanting, the wheel to be reinvented. But while it never attempts to tear up the rulebook it still finds space between the lines.
The show within a show, Caesar (which also stars the matchless Jim Howick) is funny and judiciously employed. The knowing gags about Netflix true-crime documentaries and how Chapel got down to the last two for Ned Stark in Game of Thrones are much funnier because they're sporadic. Spall can be an acquired taste, but here his moments of peak Spalliness are offset by the casting of Keyworth, who has his measure in every scene. Their two-handers are all beautifully judged and Keyworth is superb throughout (in what deserves to be a breakout role.)
Throw in a clever twist at the end and series two is set up nicely. This cosy crime drama could run and run – and for once, that's not a threat.
