Suspect review: So over-wrought and stagey, it's difficult to understand how Channel 4 gave it a second series

An overwrought, stagey 'high-concept' drama, series one followed grey, grizzled cop Danny Frater (James Nesbitt) as he tried to find out the circumstances that lead to the mysterious death of his daughter, Christina.

He was sent on a chase through various settings and each episode saw him confront one or two suspects – as the title might imply – in the case.

This new series follows the same format, but shifts the focus. We're three weeks after Christina's death, and Frater has been sectioned having stabbed pathologist Jackie (Joely Richardson) in the belief that she murdered his daughter.

We're at the mid-century modernist home-cum-office of Frater's wife, Dr Susannah Newman (Anne-Marie Duff). She's a hypnotherapist, teasing out her patients neuroses while they're in a trance.

A tall, dark, handsome stranger knocks at her door, and says he made an appointment, seeking her help to quit smoking, and despite being grief-stricken she agrees to take him in.

“You won't say anything you don't want to,” Newman assures him, before engaging in some frankly weird flirting involving a cigarette.

Before long the man – Jonathan Fallow (Dominic Cooper) – is on the couch, in a trance, and spilling all sorts of secrets, the vast majority of which will not help him swear off the tabs.

He babbles on about “white flesh, black bird” and confesses to killing girls on the orders of some shadowy boss before fleeing.

All of this sets Newman off on a similar journey to hubby Frater, determined to stop Fallow – a neat variation on John Doe, as pointed out by the oily Det Supt Graves (Ben Miller) – from killing again, an d possibly linking it to her daughter's death.

The first two episodes continue the stagey feel of the first series, with the virtual two-hander format having to carry a lot of weight that the simplistic dialogue cannot.

The sequence with Fallow on the couch just doesn't ring true, and all of the characters' actions are driven by the needs of the plot, not the characters themselves.

Meanwhile, there are just some frankly laughable elements.

Cooper is channelling Dr Jekyll in his scenes with Newman, chatting lightly about replacing cigarettes with doughnuts, before his voice suddenly gets lower and more animalistic when his serial killer Mr Hyde turns up under hypnosis.

Newman goes off to visit Graves at the 'West London Police Academy', where the trainees are so keen to learn, they practice unarmed combat next to the lobby cafe, crash mats stuck next to the lifts.

Tamsin Greig plays a lawyer – and Graves' wife – as a gin-and-tonic-in-a-can swilling, vaping vamp, who seems oddly at ease with her husband's infidelities.

She first warns Newman off investigating Fallow's crimes, before then ostentatiously whispering vital information in her ear – solely to set up episode three.

Graves gaslights Newman, claiming all her suspicions about serial killers are in her head, before confirming that actually, he knows all about it but hasn't done anything.

It all seems to be a frightful waste of a really talented cast, and Duff does her best as Newman, but it seems to be a case of putting the plot before the players.

Everything is geared to the concept of one episode, one suspect, and nothing can grow organically. All the pacing goes from sudden rush to get to the next suspect, quiet bit where they chat, sudden rush to leave.

Apparently, this second series was commissioned because the first was popular with audiences. Let's just say there's no accounting for taste, and hope there isn't a third.