Critic Reviews
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It’s all almost provocatively basic, but I always enjoy Dalgliesh. It’s all down to Carvel, who keeps his performance as the widowed detective meticulously subtle, dignified and steeped in underlying melancholy.
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Death in Holy Orders isn’t the most thrilling of PD James’s plots (I haven’t read the book but I have seen both episodes and had guessed the killer by the end of episode one) but it was helped enormously by two guest performances.
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We continue to enjoy Dalgliesh because of Bertie Carvel’s grimace-filled empathetic portrayal of Adam Dalgliesh. We just wish we had more info about the detective and somewhat more tightly-written mysteries.
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If the detective remained something of an enigma, then there was an accomplished support cast to breathe life into the suspects.
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You get the impression Dalgliesh has its eyes on a higher prize than simply being a variant on Midsomer Murders. Yet it drip-feeds its principal characterisation so sparingly that I’m no nearer to knowing what makes Dalgliesh tick now than when it started three years ago.