Crime drama fans looking for something gripping enough to finish in a single evening may have found their next binge.

The BBC thriller In the Dark packs its story into just four hour-long episodes, following a detective whose investigation into the disappearance of two young girls forces her back to the hometown she has spent years desperately avoiding.

But the case becomes intensely personal almost immediately.

The man arrested over the disappearances is married to her childhood best friend — and DI Helen Weeks soon finds herself asking whether police have really caught the right suspect.

Originally broadcast in 2017, the drama boasts a cast that now looks particularly impressive, including MyAnna Buring, Shetland star Jamie Sives, Ashley Walters and Baby Reindeer‘s Jessica Gunning.

And for viewers who missed it the first time, the entire mystery is short enough to unravel in one night.

A missing-girls investigation drags Helen back home

MyAnna Buring leads the series as DI Helen Weeks, an ambitious detective whose professional life is complicated by the fact that she is pregnant.

Helen has little desire to return to Polesford, the rural Derbyshire town where she grew up.

Then two young girls disappear.

A suspect is arrested, and Helen discovers that the man’s wife is Linda Bates, played by Emma Fryer — her childhood best friend.

That connection is enough to pull Helen back to a place she has deliberately kept out of her life.

She travels to Polesford with her partner and fellow detective Paul, played by Ben Batt, and walks directly into an investigation attracting enormous media attention.

Linda is suddenly at the center of a nightmare.

Her husband is suspected of abducting two children, reporters are circling and the local police are under intense pressure to prove they have the right man.

Helen, however, is not convinced that the case is as straightforward as it appears.

Has the wrong man been arrested?

That doubt becomes the driving force behind the opening story.

The police have a suspect.

The community wants answers.

But Helen begins questioning whether the evidence really points where everyone assumes it does.

Her involvement also creates another mystery.

Why is she so determined to help Linda when she has spent years avoiding both her friend and Polesford itself?

Helen’s return gradually exposes uncomfortable connections between the investigation and a past she would rather leave untouched.

The missing-girls case therefore operates on two levels.

There is the immediate question of what happened to the children and whether Linda’s husband is responsible.

But underneath it sits the mystery of Helen herself.

The detective has reasons for staying away from her hometown — and returning means confronting them.

Pregnancy adds another layer of pressure

Helen is already dealing with a major upheaval before the investigation begins.

She is pregnant and apprehensive about becoming a mother.

Rather than treating that simply as background information, the series places her pregnancy alongside the increasingly disturbing case she is trying to solve.

Helen is attempting to understand what motherhood means for her future while investigating the disappearance of two children and confronting unresolved experiences from her own past.

That combination gives the detective a vulnerability rarely afforded to more conventional television investigators.

She can be determined and professionally capable without being emotionally untouched by what she encounters.

The story changes direction halfway through

One of the more unusual elements of In the Dark is its structure.

The four episodes do not simply stretch a single kidnapping investigation across the entire series.

The opening two episodes focus on the case in Polesford.

Then the drama changes direction.

Episodes three and four move Helen into another investigation after a devastating gangland shooting plunges her into Manchester’s criminal underworld.

The shift is deliberate.

In the Dark is adapted from two novels by bestselling crime writer Mark Billingham: Time of Death and In the Dark.

Rather than expanding one book into a conventional four-hour mystery, the television adaptation effectively uses its short run to tell two connected stories centered on Helen.

That gives the series a surprisingly large amount of narrative for only four episodes.

A cast filled with familiar crime-drama faces

Buring may be at the center of the story, but the supporting cast has become even more recognizable in the years since the series originally aired.

Jamie Sives appears in the drama and will be familiar to viewers of Shetland, where he played Alan Killick.

Ashley Walters, who went on to appear in projects including Top Boy and Adolescence, is also among the ensemble.

Jessica Gunning plays DC Sophie Carson.

Gunning later achieved international recognition for her performance as Martha in Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, a role that earned her major awards attention and transformed her into one of Britain’s most recognizable television performers.

Georgia Tennant appears as Helen’s sister Jenny, while Emma Fryer plays Linda Bates.

The result is the kind of ensemble that makes revisiting an older British drama particularly interesting: several performers who were already established actors have since become familiar faces from much bigger international hits.

It comes from a writer Harlan Coben fans may recognize

The creative team provides another reason for crime fans to take notice.

The adaptation was written by Danny Brocklehurst, whose television career stretches across numerous British dramas.

More recently, Brocklehurst has become particularly associated with adaptations of Harlan Coben’s thrillers.

His credits include Netflix’s Fool Me Once and Missing You, alongside other series including Brassic.

That experience is easy to understand in the context of In the Dark.

The drama is built around buried history, uncertain suspects and personal secrets colliding with a criminal investigation — ingredients that will feel familiar to viewers who enjoy twist-heavy mystery series.

Viewers called it ‘excellent’ and ‘suspenseful’

Audience reaction has remained positive years after the original broadcast.

IMDb reviewers have described In the Dark as “excellent” and “suspenseful,” while one praised it as a “well-written, thoughtfully directed crime drama.”

Another viewer simply admitted becoming “addicted” to the series.

Professional reviews were somewhat more measured but still found plenty to praise.

The Telegraph awarded the drama three stars and described it as “taut and tensely atmospheric” with an intriguing central premise.

The Guardian acknowledged that the series did not reinvent the detective genre but said its darker strands remained compelling.

That assessment arguably captures the show’s appeal.

In the Dark is not trying to dismantle everything viewers recognize about British crime television.

Instead, it takes familiar ingredients — a troubled detective, a missing-person investigation, an isolated community and long-buried secrets — and compresses them into an atmospheric four-hour story.

Why it could appeal to Shetland fans

Viewers who enjoy Shetland may find plenty that feels familiar here beyond the presence of Jamie Sives.

Both dramas understand the value of location in a mystery.

Polesford is not merely somewhere Helen happens to investigate.

It represents a history she has tried to escape.

Returning there means encountering people who remember a different version of her, while the small-town environment intensifies the scrutiny surrounding the missing girls.

That sense of a detective becoming personally entangled in the place she is investigating gives the opening episodes much of their tension.

There is also the same emphasis on character that helps distinguish the strongest British detective dramas from simple procedural mysteries.

Solving the crime matters.

Understanding why Helen reacts to it the way she does matters just as much.

Four episodes make it an unusually easy binge

Perhaps the strongest argument for discovering In the Dark now is simply its length.

Modern crime dramas regularly demand six, eight or even ten hours before delivering their answers.

This one requires four.

That makes it possible to watch Helen return to Polesford, become embroiled in the missing-girls investigation and follow her into the darker second half of the series without committing to weeks of viewing.

There is no sprawling collection of seasons to catch up on and no enormous episode count standing between viewers and the conclusion.

For anyone who likes discovering forgotten BBC thrillers filled with familiar actors, that compact format makes In the Dark particularly tempting.

A detective returns to the hometown she hates.

Two girls have vanished.

Her best friend’s husband has been arrested.

And before Helen can determine whether police have the right man, she must confront why she was so determined never to come home in the first place.

All four episodes of In the Dark are available on BBC iPlayer, with the series also set to stream free on U.