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Van Der Valk, series 2, review: nice canals, shame about the bog standard crime drama

Marc Warren and Maimie McCoy in Van Der Valk - ITV
Marc Warren and Maimie McCoy in Van Der Valk - ITV

Van Der Valk is back, and women are still falling at his feet. It’s a bit odd. Marc Warren is a perfectly attractive man – one with a striking resemblance to Malcolm McDowell – but his character can’t go a few minutes without gorgeous women throwing themselves at him. Within five minutes of this episode of Van Der Valk (ITV), which kicked off the second series of the remake, he was trying to have a quiet drink when two pretty young things sidled over to his table and propositioned him. Then he was rescued from their clutches by a beautiful blonde who immediately took him home for a night of passion. I don’t think this ever happened to Morse.

The first series was hamstrung by its need to re-establish the character in our minds, meaning that the script constantly bashed us over the head with the fact that Van Der Valk was moody and lived on a boat. Now the cast has settled in and the pressure of reviving a well-known drama is off, the show is better. Van Der Valk has also warmed up a bit towards his colleagues, including partner Lucienne (Maimie McCoy) and young officer Job Cloovers (Elliot Barnes-Worrell). Cloovers uses his brains where Van Der Valk relies on instinct, so has frequent lightbulb moments in which he says: “That’s it! I’ve got it!”

This series comprises three feature-length episodes, and the first involved a serial killer steeped in the history of Amsterdam. There were cryptic clues, calligraphy, windmills (and wind turbines). The first victim was a lawyer who had won a case on behalf of the city to evict an artists’ community – or a bunch of squatters, depending on your point of view – and whose body was discovered strung up on a wind farm. Van Der Valk still has a queasy fixation with the corpses of murdered young women. There were two here, whose bodies had been mutilated with an “X” carved into their skin. I could have done without that gruesome sight (and when was the last time you saw the cameras panning over the torso of a male victim in the same way?).

It’s a serviceable drama with a decent ensemble – the team is rounded out by Luke Allen-Gale as Brad, a sergeant who refers to bodies as “stiffs” and suspects as “proper nutjobs”, and Darrell D’Silva as pathologist Hendrik Davie. But there is nothing to raise Van Der Valk above other detective dramas; only the Amsterdam setting marks it out as different.