Des

ITV may be the home of trash tv, Opportunity Knocks for the 21st century, generic police procedurals etc, but they've always excelled at true crime leaning towards horror - Shipman, Appropriate Adult, This Is Personal, their Brady/Hindley dramatisation, and so on. The three-part Des was up there with their best, with David Tennant extraordinary as Dennis Nilsen - far from your typical crim, owning up to his crimes and doing his best to assist the investigation, to the point where it becomes unclear whether this actually is assistance or part of some calculated intellectual game. Watch out for this one at award ceremonies. The soundtrack wasn't the sort of thing you could put on a CD and sell, more a selection of sparse and rather grim stings, but it was expertly used and really pointed up the horrors (which remained tantalisingly unseen - in the final episode there's a slow pan around Nilsen's apartment, post-trial, which cuts away with us barely registering a half-glimpsed pool of blood in the bathtub). Daniel Mays jumped up a few notches here too with a heavyweight performance - standard 'weary copper' stuff perhaps, but convincing, especially during scenes where he is battling with his superiors to keep the case live. If you'd told me beforehand that all three parts would focus largely on face-to-face conversations, I'd have feared the worst, wondering where the depiction of the murders, the responses of Nilsen's initially-loyal civil service colleagues, the reaction of the press, and the significance of the 80s setting had all vanished to (though in respect of the latter there are a few fleeting indications of Nilsen's political views) - but the structure we are presented with works so, so effectively. Very impressive, and the best thing Tennant has ever done.