Lazy, hackneyed... and the sweary female detective ticks every cliche: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS on The Crow Girl
By CHRISTOPHER STEVENS, TV CRITIC
Published: 17:51 EDT, 20 July 2026 \| Updated: 20:43 EDT, 20 July 2026
Rating: Two out of five stars
Special request to all TV crime writers. No more breakfasts.
Let's please have a ban on murder dramas that open with a stressed mother trying to get her sulky teens ready for school while burning the toast and helping her husband find his car keys.
It's such a lazy, hackneyed way to introduce the characters, a cheap shorthand to tell us this woman is competent but underappreciated, dedicated but overwhelmed.
Before breakfast is done, whether she's a uniformed copper, a detective, a forensics specialist, even a spy, she'll have news of a killer to catch. And as she hunts down suspects, we know she'll be surrounded by colleagues just like her own family — useless older men and needy, immature juniors.
I'm so fed up of this formula that, from now on, every time it happens I'll use a headline about 'cereal killers'. You have been warned.
Eve Myles, as DCI Jeanette Kilburn, ticks the whole cliche checklist. Even as she pleads with her hubbie to empty the dishwasher, her phone rings. There's been a murder!
Her partner, DI Lou Stanley (Dougray Scott), gets the news after her but somehow, by the time they're at the crime scene, he's fully appraised of all the facts DCI Jeanette needs — victim's identity unknown, no visible cause of death, anonymous caller reported the body.
The corpse is male, naked and dumped among a heap of black binliners in Bristol, which tells us this investigation is going noir. Anyone doubting that could switch over to The Dark on ITV1, where another stressed female detective and mother was on the trail of a killer also leaving dead naked young men in bizarre poses, this time across the Scottish Highlands.
Left to right: DCI Mike Dilliston played by Elliot Edusah, DCI Jeanette Kilburn played by Eve Myles, Sophia Craven played by Katherine Kelly and Victoria Burkemen played by Clara Rugaard
The Crow Girl has already aired on Paramount+, which began streaming the second series yesterday. Based on a Swedish novel by Erik Axl Sund, its plot appears to have lost its logic in translation. The corpse was found outside the door of a supercilious dentist named Carl Lowry.
Kermit snatcher of the night:
Wading down river, Chris Packham plunged his hand into the shallows, on Evolution (BBC1), and pulled out a frog. 'Clearly out of practice,' he said modestly, 'but I did manage to catch one.' Miss Piggy would be proud of him. Haiii-yarr!
But Lowry has already been arrested for possession of child porn — and this means, for reasons I don't understand, that his mental health has to be assessed before he can be questioned.
Enter Dr Sophia Craven (Katherine Kelly), a psychologist in an ice-blonde wig, who spends her evenings luxuriating in a warm bath with lots of candles. Here, we realise, is a woman who doesn't have children, or a useless husband. She probably doesn't even eat breakfast.
What a contrast to overworked, sweary DCI Jeanette. Unable to quiz her only suspect, she resorts to pleading with the pathologist for clues — only to discover the corpse was deep-frozen, something she missed at the scene.
'He's like a Findus lasagne down the back of a freezer,' quips the doctor. Ready meals ... that's something a busy working mum can understand.