Gothic-lite is a contradiction in terms, I suppose, but it’s undoubtedly what you get from new six-part thriller The Dark. Based on Scottish crime writer GR Halliday’s From the Shadows, it opens with an unseen man carefully punching holes in leather straps, then striding across the Highlands with a naked man’s either very unconscious or very dead body over his shoulder. The arms swing like metronomes marking time that has already, we very much suspect, run out.
So it proves, as the next time we see the body it is via a drone shot that reveals it to have been laid supine on the ground, arms pointing prayerfully above the head in futile supplication. DI Monica Kennedy (Laura Donnelly) is called to investigate and a cold, webby mass of intrigue begins to be spun. When it’s not gloaming it’s dreich – which, with the icy finger of dread that frequently runs up and down the viewer’s spine, makes it the perfect antidote to a heatwave.
