LUCY BETTS-TAYLOR – Ludwig – Anna Maxwell Martin

An aspiring photographer, Lucy is “still doing endless weddings and bonneted babies”, and has been married for twenty-odd years to DCI James Taylor. When her husband disappears she decides to make the most of the opportunity and phones John, her husband’s twin brother. John (aka Ludwig), an agoraphobic but brilliant puzzle-setter ideally suited to solving the disappearance of his brother. At the start, he doesn’t believe that, but with judicious application of flattery and cajolery, Lucy transforms her brother-in-law into the consulting detective she needs, at the same time re-creating herself as his Watson-like assistant. The scene in which she introduces a flabbergasted Ludwig to what will become his new life is artfully done and unforgettable.

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MARTHA “EM” CYPRESS – Revival – Romy Weltman

She was born in water, and when she died, an unspecified and mystical connection with water resurrects her (along with fifty or so others who had died in the same general area of space/time). Born with a crippling bone disease, she led a sheltered, quiet life until her death at age twenty. Brought back from the dead by occult ritual, Em investigates her own death, finds and executes her killer, then flees into hiding with the wife of her killer’s accomplice. On the way to all that, she destroys the local crime family and frees the others resurrected with her. Now, in a remote cabin by a lake from which she can presumably draw power, Em is planning something.

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THORNTON GUINESS – SurrealEstate – Alex Ozerov-Meyer

A role-playing game called Alpacalypse is where Augie met Tag, and on Augie’s recommendation Tag is hired by the Roman/Ireland Agency as a researcher. A shut-in who never leaves his apartment, Tag had been troubleshooting equipment for the Navy, and during his job interview he likens Virginia class U-boats to “the eighteen-armed Hindu warrior goddess Durga in a wetsuit riding a snorkeling tiger.” Before being hired and without being asked, Tag contacts Susan by phone and helps her deal with a haunted farm. Later, he tells his new employers: “I look forward to knowing all about each and every one of you – in a not-at-all inappropriate or creepy way.” His connection with alpacas is never detailed, but Tag’s final wishes specified that his ashes be “spread among the scat of the proud alpaca in the land of their birth”, the South American Antiplano.

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CONSTABLE KLAASEN – Recipes For Love and Murder – Megan Alexander

A working-class constable, Klaasen appears quietly in the background in fourteen of the show’s sixteen episodes. She frequently fondles a green slinky toy, which might be what allows her to remain calm in the midst of turmoil. Her attitude toward her superiors is deferential with the tiniest hint of implied disapproval. Little has been revealed about her personal life, but when newspaper editor Hattie Wilson complained that she was the only one in the newsroom not dating a cop, reporter Jesse September advised her that Klaasen was “available”, so the constable might not currently be in a relationship. Perhaps she will be promoted to detective next season.

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DR SUSANNAH ZELLABY – Midwich Cuckoos – Keeley Hawes

A reinterpretation of Wyndham’s character Gordon Zellaby, Susannah is a family therapist confronted with alien behaviour in the small English town of Midwich. By chance, on the night of the invasion, she is away in London. Both the novel and Stirling Silliphant’s 1960 film adaptation of it left one wondering if Mr. Zellaby’s drastic solution to the situation was entirely necessary. Susannah is grandmother to one of the aliens, and has much more to lose than did Gordon, who was retired, elderly, and had a terminal heart condition. That Susannah arrives at (and enacts) the same solution that Gordon did convincingly removes any doubt of its necessity.

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DETECTIVE YATES – Wild Cards – Amy Goodmurphy

Yates replaced Cole as Simmons’ partner when Cole was demoted to harbour duty under suspicious circumstances. Her personal life seems interesting, though we have few details. Her mother is a psychiatrist. She was once on pain pills that “made everyone look like Margot Robbie”. (It was, she remarks, a “great day”.) When she borrows Max’s military grade spyglasses, Max is cautioned to cut the feed around ten o’clock. “You don’t,” says Yates, “want to see what I get up to.” The detective tries to look harmless and disorganized, but one suspects neither of those things is true. After two seasons and twenty episodes, we still don’t know her first name.

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