Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Chelsea Detective’ On Acorn TV, Where An Unlikely Police Detective Solves Crimes In One Of London’s Ritziest Districts

How do you like your police detectives, especially on the various mystery series you see on Acorn, BritBox and PBS? Brooding and troubled or quirky and bothered by everyday life? The Chelsea Detective on Acorn features the latter, with a partner that’s just as “normal” as he is. Does it work?

THE CHELSEA DETECTIVE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of houseboats on the Thames in London’s Chelsea neighborhood. Living in one of those houseboats is DI Max Arnold (Adrian Scarborough) of the Metropolitan Police.

The Gist: Max rides his bike to work every day. As he goes on his route, he stops in front of a bookstore that recently closed after almost 50 years in business. He sighs and continues his ride. A young thief clips the lock on Max’s bike not knowing that he is watching. Instead of arresting the dude, he tells the thief to buy a new lock and drop it off at the police station, with receipt. There’s less paperwork involved that way.

A sixty-something man wakes up in his flat. Already in a bit of an altered state, he sees the phrase “The wages of sin is death” written on his mirror. He stumbles out, freaked out that spirits are visiting him. Outside of the South Kensington tube station, he accosts a busker, uttering the phrase on his mirror, then stumbles down onto the platform. Suddenly, we see him falling onto the tracks right in front of an oncoming tube train.

At the station, Arnold meets his partner, DS Priya Shamsie (Sonita Henry), coming back early from her maternity leave. Both have a lot going on in their personal lives. Priya is coming back early because it’s obvious that she’s suffering from postpartum depression; she’s having trouble connecting with her baby daughter and leaving her husband Nitin (Davood Ghadami) to do most of the child care.

Max recently lost his father, and he’s going through a divorce from his wife Astrid Fischer (Anamaria Marinca); it’s why he lives on the houseboat. He wants his expensive espresso maker back, considering Astrid doesn’t even drink coffee; she finally drops it off, but it’s broken. She drops off a new one, but he brings it back, wanting to fix the old one, and of course a fight ensues.

At first it looks like the man who died at South Ken jumped onto the tracks. But video from the tube train driver’s camera reveals that he was pushed. What the partners find out is that he was a stonemason that worked at a local cemetery; he was also very devout. When the ME, Ashley Wilton (Sophie Stone), tells them she saw small burns on the man’s shoulders, it makes it look like he was ritually abusing himself as a way to make amends for something.

The investigation takes Max to the house of his aunt Olivia (Frances Barber), who has been managing the inventory of his father’s/her brother’s bookstore since he died. A man who was giving tours of the cemetery is crashing at her flat, but it turns out he’s been nicking the books to sell on eBay. Could he be the one who’s been gaslighting the victim by writing Bible passages on his mirror?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The easygoing, gentle manner of The Chelsea Detective reminds us of BritBox’s recent entry, Murder In Provence.

Our Take: We think the idea behind The Chelsea Detective, created by Peter Fincham (Da Ali G Show), is that Max Arnold, who is short, schlubby and likes to wear cardigan sweaters and bike to work, is an unlikely police detective. He definitely has his methods, like the corkboard he has up in the living room of his houseboat, where he pins up photos and other evidence. When Priya sees the mess of a bulletin board, she asks Max, “This actually makes sense to you?” and he says, “Yeah, that’s how I see things.”

This isn’t your standard British police procedural, it seems; most of the time, the cops are driven to the exclusion of any other life, they drink hard, they lead very solitary lives in sparse apartments. Both Max and Priya are dealing with darkness in their lives, but it’s more like the kind of stuff that we all deal with: family deaths, divorces, struggles as a new parent. They’re significant struggles, but both Max and Priya use work to escape them. They’re not dogged by that one case they couldn’t solve.

That aspect of The Chelsea Detective, along with the settings in London’s ritzy district, are what are the big draws. The mysteries are another matter. Because the episodes are 90 minutes each, there is room to explore both the mystery at hand and the lives of Max and Priya. However, it still seems that the mystery at the center of this first episode is a bit muddled and not easy to follow along and try to solve. The identity of the killer comes somewhat out of nowhere, with not many other clues pointing to that person.

In a lot of ways, it reminds us of American mystery procedurals of recent vintage, like Elementary. It seems most of the series is going to be built around the lives of Max and Priya, and the chemistry between the two as partners (who are not super-involved in each other’s personal lives — Max calls Priya’s infant daughter “Lupin” instead of “Poppy”). But, like Elementary, sometimes that comes at the expense of a cohesive whodunnit.

Because of the charm of both Scarborough and Henry, though, the episode is still entertaining, albeit a touch too long. Lets hope the other three episodes in the season have some better mysteries than what we saw in the first episode.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: After solving the case and visiting his father’s grave for the first time, Max makes some espresso, turns up the piano music he’s listening to, and just contemplates the world from an easy chair.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Stone as Ashley Wilton, the ME. There was an amusing bit where, while examining the crime scene, she has to turn on her hearing aids in order to talk to Max and Priya. That little bit of characterization goes a long way.

Most Pilot-y Line: It would be interesting to hear some backstory about Max’s time at the Metropolitan Police, as well as his partnership with Priya. The show picks up their partnership as if we’re at the beginning of the third season, not the first episode ever. It’s a clever way to get us into the story, but doesn’t give us a lot of outside info about the main characters.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Chelsea Detective is definitely not some intense, action-filled police drama. It’s more of the “sit with a cup of tea and enjoy” kind of detective show. And Scarborough and Henry make the show a very pleasurable, easy watch.

New episodes of the four-part UK drama The Chelsea Detective will premiere every Monday through March 28, 2022.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.