By some curious dint of mathematics, one of life’s greatest pleasures is coming across something that is just a little bit better than it needs to be. It’s such rarity, such a treat – and to pessimists, such a shock to the system – that it becomes disproportionately, though still genuinely, delightful.
Such a phenomenon is Death Valley, a new Sunday night comedy drama in which an amateur sleuth helps the police solve crimes in a bucolic village – usually English, this time Welsh – with an astronomically high murder rate and a suspect under every gooseberry bush and felt hat. So far, so Gently cum Midsomer cum Marple cum Agatha Raisin cum pull-up-a-chair-and-a-teacake-and-enjoy.
