Two of the grisly murders that take place in Wolf (Tuesday, 9pm, BBC One) happen in an area called “the donkey pitch”. The murders are not inherently funny but every time a gnarled police officer or suited and booted detective speaks gravely of the donkey pitch murders, or what happened at the donkey pitch, I wondered if they might have been prudent to choose a less asinine location. To me, the word donkey is more goof than oof.
The donkey pitch turns out to be a harbinger of the sort of tonal dissonance to come from this unusual, theatrical series, which feels far more Channel 4 than it does BBC One, and I still can’t work out if that’s a compliment or an insult. It is based on Mo Hayder’s Jack Caffery novels, about a detective who specialises in the most twisted of cases, so if you’re familiar with that work, its gruesomeness may not come as much of a shock. I was not familiar with it, so I’ll admit that all the viscera added an unexpected internal-organ-ey note.
