Or perhaps you didn’t. 2013’s many crime dramas have had such a high body count already that we’ve become desensitised to it all. It comes to something when you can look at segments of dead woman and still shovel the remains of your Sunday dinner into your mouth with the practised distance of a retired coroner. Blimey, look at her skull! Pass the salt, would you?

But the pieces left behind aren’t just physical. The title of Tony Basgallop’s drama is as multi-tiered in meaning as the Victorian built Phil & Kirsty nightmare in which it’s set. Remains of bodies, remains of lives, remains of a job that Detective Len Harper (a post-Shameless David Threlfall) just can’t shake off, and what remains of his life now he’s retired. Also the remains of a once perfectly good pineapple. God, what a senseless waste…

No one living below seems that alarmed either for that matter. About the body, not the pineapple. New owners Vidya (Amber Rose Revah) and Michael (Being Human‘s Russell Tovey) treat it with the subdued irritation you’d give a patch of dry rot, and Michael is more concerned with the life of his former teacher Mr Sellers (David Bamber, in a role that makes you wonder why he isn’t on our screens a good deal more). Their confrontation is a moment of dramatic succulence in an otherwise quiet and methodical hour of mystery.

It’s an excellent cast of – it has to be said – largely unlikeable residents. Not the kind of people you want to share a doormat with; fish flushers and busy bodies and surly teens and ruggedly handsome bastards. A classic mix of 21st century Cluedo characters you feel compelled to gaze at with a cocked eyebrow and wonder what their game is. And all of them more connected than their closed doors might suggest.

Thankfully half old man/half leather jacket Len Harper is on hand to work out how the pieces fit together. Harper’s that rare British rozzer – one who actually loves his job rather than treats it as a Pac-Man maze to grumble through in between developing developing a pill addiction or watching your home life fall apart – and Threlfall plays him with a wonderfully disarming warmth and weariness. His investigation style is straight forward and workmanlike, which works well here because so is the plot.

So, then, an enticing mystery, a great ensemble, and a modern take on the manor house murder, except with the body in the loft instead of the pantry, and fewer dowagers or glasses of brandy. It’s perfect Sunday night fodder. Whether it can keep us satisfied for the next three Sundays – wait for it – is what remains to be seen.

Aired at 9pm on Sunday 25 August 2013 on BBC One.

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