What to say if you liked it

A quality period crime drama

What to say if you disliked it

A Crimewatch reconstruction with added bodices but without Fiona ‘I love me’ Bruce introducing it

What was good about it?

• Actor Julian Fellowes popping up every now and again to talk posh and crank up the melodrama

• The picture postcard setting of Peasenhall. “A remote and charming Suffolk village and, I would have thought, the last place on earth to witness violent death,” Fellowes told us. “Religious fervour was the only game in town,” he added. “Saying that abortion was an inexact science in 1902 is putting it mildly,” he also told us in his wonderfully understated way.

• The grizzly murder of pretty servant girl Rose Harsent on a wild and stormy night (of course) at the hands of someone dressed like the Paedofinder General in Monkey Dust

• The discovery of the body was met with a hysterical scream from a woman. That was very welcome, if ear-shattering; people on TV seem to take gruesome deaths in their stride nowadays.

• Christina Cole as murder victim Rose. She’s like Daniela Denby-Ashe (without the lousy CV)

What was bad about it?

• It was all a little too low key for a Saturday slot. BBC1 should put this sort of programme out at 8.00pm on Sundays and ditch the likes of Monarch Of The Glen.