Catch up TV: Prey, Happy Valley and Nashville

There were a few moments towards the middle of the final episode of Prey (ITV Player) when it looked as if the conclusion was going to err on the side of cynicism, which would have been refreshing for a peak-time drama on ITV. It didn’t quite make it, offering instead a moment of scale-dropping revelation for John Simm’s fugitive zombie copper, followed by some old-fashioned Dixon of Dock Green justice. (Not that PC Dixon had an iPhone with an uncommon facility for recording speech in another room, up the stairs. But if he had…)

In the end, Prey was best when Marcus (Simm) was running. The plot line about corrupt cops felt shopworn, not least because one of the rozzers in question was Craig Parkinson, who played the similarly sleazy “Dot” Cottan in Line Of Duty. Still, there were nice details. It was endearing to note that the wheezy old gangster kept his sharp implements in a Victoria biscuit tin. (An aspirational biscuit, the Victoria. Far classier than the Rover Assorted).

Speaking of custard creams, BBC4’s celebration of Alan Bennett included an interview with Camden Town’s favourite son. Actually, interview is putting it a bit grandly. In Bennett Meets Hytner (BBC iPlayer) the playwright was happy to let his director, Nicholas Hytner, do the talking. There was some insight. Hytner suggested that Bennett invited empathy for people his audience would run a mile from. “And I would run a mile from, too,” Bennett replied. Expanding on his theme, Hytner observed that Bennett didn’t put himself in his writing — he found himself there. Bennett agreed with that, nearly. Writing, he said, is “not like upholstery — it’s not something you can settle back on”. But, really, he looked happier reminiscing about the time Thora Hird turned up for rehearsals dressed as a poached egg.

In Happy Valley (BBC iPlayer) Sarah Lancashire was deep in a Yorkshire mire, playing a soft cop in a hard case, made slightly daft by the presence of The League of Gentlemen’s Steve Pemberton as a jumpy accountant who unexpectedly finds himself at the centre of a murderous extortion racket. Lancashire’s cop, Catherine Cawood, is beautifully played, but she deserves to be at the centre of something more credible. Pemberton aside, the criminals feel as if they have been constructed by a slightly gonzo Enid Blyton. In a heated debate, one of them called the other a “chump”. Maybe that’s how scumbags talk in Yorkshire, but it felt like Alan Bennett in reverse. He unsettles his audience while feeling cosy. Happy Valley, despite its drug-induced psychosis, councillors on coke and neds singing Queen songs in an intimidating manner, is as tough as fur slippers.

Serial box

After a wobbly moment, Nashville (4oD) has rediscovered its mojo. Partly, this is due to the welcome death of Daddy, the character who seemed to have wandered in from Dallas, dragging the plot into town hall politics, when it’s better dealing with music and sex and emotional dishonesty (preferably at the same time). Also, the polo-playing English twit seems to have disappeared, which is good. Much of the fun this week concerns the glorious Juliette, who has become sweet and kind since she was dumped by her evil, incompetent record company. Her troubles began anew when the New York Times mistook her for a serious artist.

In Fargo (4oD) — a weird thriller punctuated by chasms of calm — Martin Freeman popped out to buy socks and came home with a shotgun.

Stay in for...

Penny Dreadful (Sky Atlantic, 9pm, Tuesday) comes with a warning that it contains “adult themes, strong language and scenes that some viewers might find disturbing”. Set in London in 1891, it’s a cheerfully pulpy excavation of the Hammer Horror sensibility, with the lovely Eva Green dragging a sharp-shooting cowboy (Josh Hartnett) from a Wild West show and introducing him to a demi-monde of Hellraiser-type monsters who look a bit querulous when you kill them, but have hieroglyphics beneath their exoskeletons. Green is hypnotic, but watch out for scene-stealing Simon Russell Beale as a fruity Egyptologist.

Fresh from Rev, but looking plumper, Tom Hollander has a go at Dylan Thomas in A Poet In New York (BBC2, 9pm, Sunday). Andrew Davies’s script tries to detect some majesty amid the poet’s boozy decline. Also miscast is Spud from Trainspotting (Ewen Bremner) playing Thomas’s long-suffering American agent.