Symbologist Robert Langdon is asked to come to Washington DC at short notice apparently by his mentor… but when he arrives, there’s a shock in store.

Dan Brown may not be everybody’s cup of tea as an author but there’s no doubting his selling power, as readers worldwide have dived into ever more unlikely quests featuring his Harvard professor Robert Langdon. Tom Hanks has played the character on screen, but this adaptation of the 2009 novel was conceived as a prequel to The Da Vinci Code et al, and rather than simply be named after the character, as originally planned, Peacock have gone with the author brand recognition.

The opening episode sets up numerous plotlines, albeit in quite broad strokes. There’s multiple references to symbols of different sorts – and of course the inevitable “smart brains” looking at something upside down – and a not too effective sequence where walls are closing in (which needed far more weight given to the sound effects to work).

Ashley Zukerman’s Langdon is something of a wimp, looking like a younger Hugh grant and only coming alive when there’s a puzzle to solve, while Sumalee Montano’s Inoue Sato, who is some bigwig at the CIA, seems a more intriguing character. Valorie Curry plays Katherine Solomon, whose role has been enlarged from the book – she’s not Langdon’s mentor Peter Solomon’s sister as in the book, but now his daughter, who’s had some sort of relationship with Langdon in the past. Beau Knapp is the bad guy Mal’akh with a set of tattoos that puts Jaime Alexander’s Blindspot character to shame, and some very melodramatic dialogue and Eddie Izzard is the aforementioned mentor.

It’s one of those pilots where lots of things happen which are hopefully going to make sense later, rather than any sort of tied-off story and there’s a little too much convenient coincidence (the CIA officer has a link to Solomon’s family, which is fine, but she also has an incredibly good classical education… a little less likely). It’s worth seeing where it goes for now – but the season throwforward suggests things are going to walk the tightrope between melodrama and silliness.

Verdict: A lot of potential here, but any goodwill could easily be squandered if the melodrama tips over. 6/10

Paul Simpson