To prove you don’t need a subscription to stream great TV, we bring you our guide to five crime shows you can stream for free on U
With the huge range of choices (and subscription fees) available, it’s good to know you don’t always need to break the budget if you fancy a change from iPlayer, ITVX and other UK services. If you are overseas, you can access some of these shows via the international version of iPlayer. This is a long post, so make sure you’ve time to read it through, or bookmark for later.
But, what is U and what content has it?
Simply put, U is the recently rebranded streaming offering from UKTV. Covering U&Dave, U&Drama, U&W and U&Yesterday, it offers a range of classic and new shows from the UK and imported.
Talking crime, classic choices abound and many are also available elsewhere. This includes shows such as Shakespeare & Hathaway (recently renewed), Sister Boniface, Campion, Silent Witness and many more. For this guide, we choose to focus on five crime shows you may well not have watched.
Our five crime shows on U
Our list is: Blackshore, The Brokenwood Mysteries, The Chelsea Detective, The Marlow Murder Club, and Whitstable Pearl. Many, but not all of these count as cozy crime, a subject, perhaps, for another post.
Blackshore
The most recently arrived of our list, Blackshore is an RTÉ show, first broadcast in the Republic earlier this year. Their summary is:
A police detective returns to her home town and becomes involved in a missing person case, which is linked to her traumatic past and the town’s dark history.
The detective, Lucey, is played by Lisa Dwan, and there’s a more extensive (and darker) summary of the show on the RTÉ website. The show has had mixed reviews, with plenty praising the cast. You can get a sense from the trailer:
The Brokenwood Mysteries
If you only watch one show from New Zealand (apart from the excellent Taskmaster NZ) it should be The Brokenwood Mysteries. With the first ten seasons on U, the eleventh is now filming, but they are short — the first few have only four episodes. The episodes are feature length so make for a good evening’s viewing. It’s definitely towards the cozy crime end of the spectrum.
The show is set in a seemingly quiet country town where the town’s newest resident, Detective Mike Shepherd, finds that murder lurks in even the most homely location.
Neill Rea stars in the lead role of DSS Shepherd while Fern Sutherland plays Detective Kristin Sims.
Each episode is a standalone story which sees the show’s two lead police officers and their trusty team including Detective Constable Daniel Chalmers played by Jarod Rawiri and Pathologist Dr Gina Kadinsky played by Cristina Ionda trying to solve a murder case.
Here’s the trailer for season 1:
The Chelsea Detective
Two series in, an a renewal for a third, this is an Acorn TV show starring Adrian Scarborough as DI Max Arnold, solving murders in London’s Chelsea. He is partnered with Detective Sergeant Priya Shamsie (Sonita Henry) in Series 1, and Detective Sergeant Layla Walsh (Vanessa Emme) in Series 2. Each series has eight episodes of around an hour.
Arnold lives on a battered houseboat in Chelsea’s Cheyne Walk, contrasting sharply with the affluent elite who provide an endless stream of murders to occupy him. The part of aunt Olivia Barber is played by Frances Barber, who also appears in Whitstable Pearl.
Here’s a trailer:
The Marlow Murder Club
The Marlow Murder Club is an adaptation of Robert Thorogood’s novel, and as we’ve covered before, he is more known as the creator of Death in Paradise and spin-offs. The show already has two seasons, and we imagine more will follow. It stars Samantha Bond, Jo Martin, Cara Horgan and Natalie Dew. The setup for the first novel / series is as follows:
Retired archaeologist Judith Potts (Bond) lives alone in a faded mansion in the peaceful town of Marlow, filling her time by setting crosswords for the local paper. During one of her regular wild swims in the Thames, Judith hears a gunshot coming from a neighbour’s garden and believes a brutal murder has taken place.
When the police are reluctant to believe her story, Judith finds herself forming an unlikely friendship with local dog-walker and empty-nester Suzie (Martin) and unfulfilled vicar’s wife Becks (Horgan) as they start an investigation of their own. Eventually asked to assist with the official police investigation, headed by newly promoted Tanika (Dew), the women must piece together clues, grill suspect witnesses, and face down real danger as they work against the clock to stop the killer in their tracks.
Here’s a trailer for series 1:
Whitstable Pearl
Another Acorn TV show, Whitstable Pearl is based on the books by Julie Wassmer. Series 3 only arrived on Acorn TV last month, so it will be a while before it comes to U. Until then, there are two seasons of twelve episodes available. The premise is:
With her son grown, single mum Pearl (Kerry Godliman) pursues her lifelong dream and starts a private detective agency, which she runs from her family restaurant in the coastal town of Whitstable. Drawn by her caring nature, locals soon flock to her with all kinds of cases. But when a friend dies suspiciously, Pearl finds herself in conflict with gruff new cop in town DCI Mike McGuire (Howard Charles).
Frances Barber also appears as Pearl’s mother. Series 1 has a lot of backstory, and while it’s all still very tidy, the cast work well and the subject matter is often very grim. It calls Beyond Paradise to mind and in many ways is more substantial. There’s a will they / won’t they thread as well as dark revelations about her parents.
Here’s the series 1 trailer: