DCI Charlie Hicks is smart, loyal, well loved and crooked.

DI Elaine Renko is smart, driven, isolated and carrying damage far deeper than her scars.

Hicks has every reason to distrust Renko. Renko has every reason to distrust Hicks.

But when they catch a homicide that leads to a file called ‘Hard Sun’, Hicks and Renko find themselves united against forces they never imagined.

Neil Cross is one of the best writers working in TV today. Here, the creator of Luther proves that by taking a good half dozen genres, ramming them together and creating something that’s as bleak as it is smart, as humane as it is brutal. Over the course of the first episode, Hard Sun transitions from a police procedural to an espionage thriller, an action series, science fiction, flirts with horror and finally settles on the most important, and simplest thing:

What would you do if you knew how much time everyone had left?

Cross’ script is almost frighteningly efficient, setting up Hicks and Renko, their world and then detonating a bomb under it in under an hour. It’s also cheerfully unwilling to pull a single punch. The opening fight scene is scrappy and brutal. The bookend to it on the banks of the river Thames is just as bloody knuckled. In between we get unflinching looks at our two leads and what we think is the status quo. Given how the series pivots in the back ten minutes, we’re guessing that won’t be the case for long.

It’s helped even more by the fantastic, across the board casting. Jojo Macari and Lorraine Borroughs impress in supporting roles that would, in lesser hands, be window dressing. Here they’re vital parts of the machine even if we don’t know quite what the machine does yet.

But it’s Agyness Deyn and Jim Sturgess that stay with you. Sturgess, who perhaps lightly seasons Hicks with a few of John Luther’s mannerisms, has tremendous fun as a happy go lucky cockney chancer with a smile on his face and a knife behind his back. Charlie Hicks might be a very, very bad man. He might also be very hard done by. We don’t know, yet, but Sturgess’ performance is so charismatic you’ll want to hang around to find out.

But Deyn is the cast member who registers the most here. With a  buzzcut and a haunted stare, she establishes early on that Elaine Renko is every inch her partner’s equal and uniquely damaged to boot. Quiet where Hicks is loud, careful where he’s flamboyant and precise where he wings it, Renko feels genuinely dangerous.

The main cast is rounded out by Nikki Amuka-Bird as the near subliminal spook chasing the Hard Sun file. She’s a world away from the roles we’ve seen her in before in this field; driven, grief-stricken and frantic. Grace has none of the serenity a lesser series, or actress would give her. Instead she’s focused, determined and a second away from panic.

Verdict: At the Q and A I attended after the screening. Cross said the hope was that the show would run five seasons. Based on this episode, it deserves to. Hard Sun is complicated, humane and massively gripping. It’s also the first must-see show of 2018. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

Hard Sun begins on Saturday January 6th on BBC One