Quirke

The eyes have it. Looking out with a world-weary spirit, the inky pools have seen plenty of trouble and expect to see a whole lot more, and the camera can’t get enough of them. Gabriel Byrne may not be on the A-list as a box-office draw, but the Irishman is a connoisseur’s star; a seductive wizard of the less-ismore school of acting, and putting him centre stage as browbeaten detective-cumpathologist Quirke (Sunday, BBC One, 9pm) in 1950s Dublin, is a masterstroke of casting. Byrne’s face looks uncommonly true to period: his rumpled good looks sit well beneath a wide-brimmed hat or propped up against the bar in a smoke-swathed pub, and he’s just one of the big guns in this captivating three-part series.

The BBC’s go-to scribe, Andrew Davies, has adapted the thrillers by Benjamin Black (the genre nom-de-plume for novelist John Banville). In the first episode, Quirke’s investigation into the death of a young woman uncovers secrets that touch on his own life and of those around him. As the drama exerts its forceful grip on our attention, you can simply savour the costumes and interiors, but there’s more to this than period escapism. Buried in his basement office at the hospital, Quirke is stubbornly digging to unearth the secrets a family and a nation would rather stayed hidden. The results are deliciously noirish and essential viewing – and look out for a mesmerising cameo by Michael Gambon as the judge and Quirke’s adoptive father.

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