ReviewWhat to stream this weekend: upper-class crime investigations in The Chelsea Detective season 2 on BBC First
- London’s upmarket Chelsea area is the scene of high-end crimes in BBC First’s The Chelsea Detective, starring Adrian Scarborough and Vanessa Emme
- Meanwhile, on Disney+, Nam Joo-hyuk stars as Kim Ji-yong, a modern-day superhero in Korean drama Vigilante
You can be assured of a better class of criminal offence in Chelsea than in just any old London borough.
So Detective Inspector Max Arnold (Adrian Scarborough) is reminded in series two of The Chelsea Detective (BBC First) – a police procedural short on shoot-’em-up action but long on the cerebral, subtle aspects of crime busting.
This season’s four, feature-length cases take in an art-heist murder at a swanky gallery, the dangers of living in high-end retirement homes, money-grabbing on the water in the world of rowing clubs, psychotherapy, dating and stitch-ups in the tailoring game.
Not that DI Arnold, still contending with love-life problems outside the station, runs with the flamboyant or flashy himself.
He rides a bicycle to work, doesn’t dress like a peacock and lives on the literal fringes of his “patch” – on a River Thames houseboat, perhaps inviting comparisons with the similarly reserved, drily humorous fictional Dutch detective Piet Van der Valk.