Review | What to stream this weekend: in Van der Valk season 3 on BBC First, cynical Dutch detective and his rule-bending team return
- Van der Valk (played by Marc Warren) is back for a new season of crime solving, joined by new recruit Sergeant Citra Li, played by Django Chan-Reeves
- Meanwhile, on Netflix, three clueless teenagers find themselves in a love triangle mixed with some time travelling in K-drama A Time Called You
Looted treasures from the Dutch East Indies vex the Netherlands’ most famous detective (even though he speaks in English) in Van der Valk (BBC First).
Gruff, tough, cynical and allergic to smiling, Commissaris Simon “Piet” Van der Valk (Marc Warren) has returned to revel in a third three-part series of feature-length investigations.
Here the teasing, labyrinthine cases feature passion gone awry; restitution and historical wrongdoings, close to home as well as in distant Indonesia; and black magic, which is implicated in the murder of a terrified Aleister Crowley devotee: “death by demon”, an unimpressed Van der Valk calls it.
Two new recruits are welcomed to the plain-clothes, rule-bending team, including Django Chan-Reeves as Sergeant Citra Li, a smart, ambitious young officer who was previously – ahem – stuck in Traffic.
Even her abrasive new boss is impressed by her clue-cracking flair, as is colleague and maverick pathologist Hendrik Davie (Darrell D’Silva) – if not by her saxophone playing.