Utterly bog-standard: BBC2’s The Turkish Detective reviewed

A partly subtitled show set in Istanbul might sound like a brave departure for a BBC Sunday night crime drama. But in fact, if you strip away The Turkish Detective’s minarets and bazaars (not hard given that they supply somewhat perfunctory local colour), what remains is, according to taste, either reassuringly familiar or utterly bog-standard.

The series began with Mehmet Suleyman (Ethan Kai) leaving his job at the Metropolitan Police to take up fish-out-of-water duties in the city of his birth. Waiting for him at Istanbul airport was what at first seemed like a straightforward comedy foreigner, much given to muttering the words ‘very good, very good’ and driving like a maniac while smoking a lot. This, however, turned out to be the programme’s eponymous hero, DI Cetin Ikmen (Haluk Bilginer) who, in the traditional manner of grizzled TV cops, soon established himself as gruff but kindly, world-weary yet somehow strangely idealistic.

In this – and, indeed, facially too – Ikmen bears a more than passing resemblance to Julien Baptiste, the French detective who starred in two BBC1 series a few years ago. Nonetheless, his real role model appears to be Columbo. Immaculately shabby of dress and unfailingly vulpine in his wiliness, Ikmen has a style of interrogation that lurches suddenly from performative politeness to the posing of a killer question. (At one point, the phrase, ‘Just one more thing’ even featured in his subtitles.)

The rest of the programme isn’t overly concerned with originality either. As a Brit so uptight that he tries to arrest Ikmen’s more ‘colourful’ friends merely for breaking the law, Suleyman recalls pretty much every lead detective in Death in Paradise. The other members of the team are a computer nerd who wears specs and a kickass female dreamboat.