But arrêt, Monsieur Cruise! Here comes Sky Atlantic’s The Tunnel – an Anglo-French adaptation of The Bridge. And we say ‘adaptation’ not just because it is, but because it feels unfair to say ‘remake’ – as though it was a shadow of something. Comparing The Tunnel to its Scandinavian overland daddy is as pointless as comparing an actual tunnel to an actual bridge: they’re two different-looking methods of conveyance, but they both accomplish the same job.

And what a job The Tunnel does of delivering tense, chilling, grisly drama par excellence onto your screen. A body is found at the exact mid-point of the service tunnel of ‘Le Tunnel sous la Manche’ (actually a disused Viagra plant in Kent), sparking an investigation that involves the police on both sides of the sea. And it only gets more intriguing and twisty from there.

Waving the red, white and blue stereotypes of their respective nations are Game of Thrones‘ Stephen Dillane and Harry Potter‘s Clémence Poésy. Dillane’s DCI Karl Roebuck is the kind of seen it all, ‘mine’s a pint’ copper that British viewers like to see solving crimes on estates or in villages halls, while in complete contrast to his dishevelled but dedicated detective, Detective Elise Wasserman is a clinically efficient but brusque gendarme. So dedicated to her job that she doesn’t even bother to leave her desk to strip down to her bra and apply roll-on deodorant.

Together they’re oddly endearing in that Broadchurch Miller-and-Hardy sort of way. Two people forced to work together: the friction both an aggravation and an education. Dillane and Poésy are magnetic leads. The kind of actors reviewers love to watch but hate to write about, because it requires thinking up fistfuls of synonyms for ‘brilliant’. But they are brilliant. Synonyms be damned.

They are the needle point of the show’s seamless knitting together of two cultures. And it is seamless: from the acting to the presentation, right down to the subtitling. The Tunnel has that atmosphere about it that suffuses French dramas; the use of pale natural light that is the watermark of cinematographers on the continent, and which beautifully frames the chilling crimes. But there’s also the pace and horror of British crime drama, exemplified by one scene so extraordinarily tense that you may find you have to unwedge a sofa cushion from between your clenched buttocks.

This is classy drama. If this is your first foray into bodies bifurcated by countries, you’re going to love it and be horrified by it in all the right ways. And if you’re a Bridge fan, tune in. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the unpleasantness under and beyond the sea.

Airs at 9pm on Wednesday 16 October 2013 on Sky Atlantic.

> Buy Season 1 of The Bridge on DVD on Amazon.

Watch the trailer…

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