Suspect (Channel 4

New drama Suspect has arrived on Channel 4 - here's a full run down of who's on the cast. The new eight-part series is an adaptation of the original.

Sacha Dhawan (The Great, Doctor Who) as Jaisal He sets out on a mission for the truth, retracing her last days and hours, in an agonising crusade to discover what really happened to his only child.” Antonia Thomas (The Good Doctor, Small Axe) as Maia

The crime-thriller features a star-studded line-up, with the eight-part series getting underway tonight.

Episode eight, the series’ conclusion, is called Danny and sees the main protagonist return to one key suspect to confront them with his discovery, before the tables are turned and one final clue results in a dramatic climax to the case. Carr soon turns the tables on Nesbitt’s character, forcing him to question his personal failures as a father. Investigating a missing person case, detective Danny Frater learns that the body at the morgue is in fact Christina, his estranged daughter. When asked how tough it was to assemble all these big names, Jo McGrath, executive producer, said: “I was always very confident we’d attract fantastic actors to this series because the schedule, format and the way it’s shot presents a real acting challenge and, in my experience, good actors really respond to roles that will challenge them. Learning about her increasingly dark and complicated life leads to Danny coming face-to-face with his own failings as a man and a father. Portraying veteran detective, Danny Frater, is none other than James Nesbitt, with his character turning up at a hospital mortuary to find his estranged daughter, Christina, dead in front of his eyes.

It proudly parades its lineup of A-listers, from Joely Richardson to Richard E Grant … but not even they (or Nesbitt's wild scalpel-waving) can redeem this ...

But this isn’t lockdown, and I found the theatrics so heightened – Christina regularly appears to her father as a sort of shimmering clue from the afterlife – that by episode seven, it had lost me completely. The opening credits, which make this look like a big-budget, big-name game of Cluedo, and I suppose it is, proudly parade the cast. “Open her up, else I’ll do it myself,” he roars, waving a scalpel at Jackie, who he has locked in the mortuary with him. Over the course of the series, Danny is bounced from lead to lead, following the trail of breadcrumbs that teach him about his daughter’s life. This is a remake of a popular Danish noir series Forhøret, so it was never going to be a lighthearted romp, but it takes dedication to the dark side to make Nesbitt’s last outing as a troubled cop, Bloodlands, look upbeat. He lets out a howl of pain.

This odd and hammy crime drama series, starring James Nesbitt, feels distinctly European in style and script.

We begin with Danny ( Nesbitt) visiting the mortuary on what he thinks will be a routine bit of police business about a dead body, and discovering that the victim is his daughter. Last year’s Channel 4 drama Before We Die was a remake of a Swedish series, and it had the same problem. James Nesbitt plays a detective – his fourth in the space of a year, by my reckoning – in Suspect (Channel 4), and what an odd little drama it is.

James Nesbitt returns as another troubled policeman with a dark back-story (and matching eyebrows). TV review by Helen Hawkins.

It’s understandable that he might want to break away from the jaunty chancers of his earlier career and move over to the dark side of TV drama (cf The Missing, Bloodlands, The Secret), but it could take a total self-reinvention, like Sarah Lancashire’s as Julia Child, to escape those particular handcuffs. It’s a bold format, but it’s not the format that induces a degree of disorientation. As he pieces together a picture of Christina’s last hours, he has to accept his own role in the puzzle of her death.

Despite an impressive cast and an interesting concept, this is more self-indulgent actorly showcase than thrilling drama.

But while Nesbitt was certainly acting with a capital A, portraying Danny’s guilt at having pushed his daughter away, Suspect didn’t quite align its attempts at psychological depth with its mystery element once the main investigation kicked in. Suspect is the English language remake of the Danish show Forhøret, meaning face to face, and it takes its title literally. Armed with dental records of a missing woman who may be a match, he had a frosty chat with the brusque pathologist, played by Joely Richardson, about what looked like a probable suicide.

James Nesbitt and a superb Richard E Grant star in a thrilling drama full of dingy locations, self-loathing and unbearable tensions.

A classic trope of the police procedural, except in Suspect this scene is basically the entire first episode. It’s this pain which Nesbitt carries with him throughout. And if it does start to feel a bit formulaic – Nesbitt goes to find another person of interest, snarls and swears at them for a bit, works out that everyone is corrupt, teases out another suspect and moves on – the way the tangled web of underground connections begins to unravel and reveal itself is compelling.