It was almost inevitable, I suppose, given TV's obsession with crime drama. Murderland: a theme park somewhere off the M40 down Midsomer way. Double back at the Lewis log flume, scream Blue Murder, and run for your life (preferably towards Sun Hill).
No, wait, that's not it. Murderland is in fact a three-part thriller marking Cracker star Robbie Coltrane's return to ITV1. Or if you prefer, Harry Potter's Hagrid weaving a spell as a potentially dodgy detective. Not to be confused with the Manchester criminal psychologist Fitz, last seen on the same channel in 2006.
The former Time Out film critic David Pirie's murder story, set in 1994 and the present day, is told through the eyes of three characters, the point of view changing in each episode. Pirie describes it as "film noir with heart" and it's as thrilling as any theme park ride.
Lessons have been learned from the mixed reaction to Lucy Gannon's thriller The Children, which aired on ITV just over a year ago. ITV's controller of drama commissioning, Laura Mackie, thought that production had flagged a clear ending. "But not clearly enough," she admits now. "People loved the drama but they felt really cheated. So if they spend three hours watching something, they want some sort of resolution."
Stick with Robbie for three weeks and you will find out who killed mother and massage parlour worker Sally Walsh (Lucy Cohu) – "Hopefully the viewers won't guess what happens at the end. I hope they'll be satisfied, it's a very moving ending," promises Mackie. Coltrane's appearance, of course, should guarantee decent Monday-night ratings for ITV. But it does also makes one wonder at the amount of crime drama on television. Is there just too much of it?
Mackie admits that crime drama is appealing: "It would be very easy for us to just keep doing more and more crime — and it works," she says. But channels can't just offer wall-to-wall crime drama (Unless you're Alibi, perhaps.) "You've got to do more than just crime," Mackie says. "We struggle with it, the BBC struggle with it. It's hard."
So what's in the pipeline? "Science fiction isn't particularly my bag but that's something we're looking at. You've got to offer variety," adds Mackie, as filming begins this month on Vera – an ITV1 crime thriller starring Brenda Blethyn as Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope.
• Murderland, October 19, 9pm, ITV1
