Freeview film of the day: Department Q: a Conspiracy of Faith

Department Q: a Conspiracy of Faith ★★★★
PREMIERE 9.00-10.45pm BBC4

Premiering on the home of subtitled noir, BBC4, this is the third in a trilogy of chilly cold-case thrillers adapted from novels by Danish crime writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, grouped together in some territories by the prefix Department Q — the unit worked by detectives Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Season 3 of The Killing) and Fares Fares (a rising Swedish-Lebanese export seen in Zero Dark Thirty and Rogue One). These are typically Nordic in style, with abuse and abduction never far from the procedural surface. A Conspiracy of Faith, slickly and atmospherically directed by Hans Petter Moland, concerns a serial killer, missing children and — less predictably perhaps — an eight-year-old message in a bottle. Downbeat, nasty, deep and gloriously washed-out, it’s familiar visual and thematic territory, but a solemn religious angle and the True Detective- like relationship of the two investigators adds significant depth.