We are in the midst of a cosy crime epidemic, whether it’s Daniel Craig’s Knives Out blazing an eccentric trail at the box office or Death In Paradise mopping up on BBC One. Likewise breaking out the banner for amateur sleuthing and hokey plots is Jane Seymour in the Dublin-set Harry Wild (RTÉ One, Wednesday, 9.35pm), returning to the Irish airwaves after doing well on the Acorn streaming platform in the US.
There is, of course, a universe in which Harry Wild would be unwatchable. Seymour, the veteran British actor and one-time Bond Girl, plays an English-born retired academic turned private detective who passes her days solving mysteries in leafy contemporary Dublin. You can imagine the Martin McDonagh-esque hellscape it could so easily have been – a boozy blur of sweary old ladies, poitín-powered cops and murderously repressed priests.
Harry Wild is nothing like that. It’s lightweight, and the production values won’t knock your socks off – but it doesn’t work itself into hysterics over the fact that it is set in Ireland, and Seymour charms as a latter-day Miss Marple unleashed on D4. She is joined by a solid supporting cast, including Amy Huberman (always at her best when not trying to be funny) as her exasperated daughter-in-law, Orla, Rohan Nedd as Harry’s sidekick, Fergus, and Samantha Mumba as Fergus’s semi-estranged mother.
READ MORE Harry Wild review: Jane Seymour charms as a latter-day Miss Marple unleashed on the Dublin 4 set Nicola Coughlan be.