Murder At The Cottage (Sky Crime)
The Most Polarising TV Show of the Year (So Far) Award goes to Jim Sheridan for his examination of the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder. Borrowing many of its stylistic flourishes from the Nordic Noir brigade, it starts with prime suspect Ian Bailey apparently bang to rights and ends with you wondering just how many people have been stitched up for crimes they didn’t commit. Which isn’t to say that Bailey doesn’t come across as a deeply unlovable individual who viciously assaulted his long term, long suffering and now ex-girlfriend, Jules Thomas. The victim rather than the alleged perpetrator takes centre stage in Sophie: Murder In West Cork, the Netflix three-parter, which gained access to family video footage of Sophie at various points in her all too short life. Sadly, neither account will bring her back or provide her grieving loved ones with any sense of closure.

Raven (Walter Presents strand of Channel4.com)
Cops don’t come any more unorthodox than Adam Kruk who wears a neck brace and is addicted to painkillers and psychedelic drugs. Despite – or perhaps because – of his chemical dependencies, he’s the number one manhunter on the force and therefore gets the call when an 11-year-old boy is kidnapped. As the plot careers off in ever more unlikely directions, we’re left wondering “is this real or a product of our antihero’s fevered imagination?” It’s part of a Walter-curated Polish season that also includes legal eagle drama The Defence and pre-World War II Jewish gangster romp, The King Of Warsaw.

The Gloaming (STAR On Disney+)
Our disappointment at this not being about the genre-bending Irish-American supergroup of the same name evaporated the moment we were introduced to Molly McGee, the troubled detective who discovers a link between a grisly new murder and an equally grisly cold case involving occult practices. Played with panache by former teen model Emma Booth, Molly finds evil lurking around every corner of the starkly beautiful Tasmanian town she polices. Nodding furiously at cult British horror film The Wicker Man, this doesn’t so much chill the blood as freeze the marrow in your bones.

Cruel Summer (Amazon Prime, August 6)
No family, friendship or relationship is left un-fractured as Dog Sees God: Confessions Of A Teenage Blockhead playwright Bert V. Royal tells the semi-fictitious tale of an outcast kid who may or may not be involved in the abduction of her school’s Ms. Congeniality. Spread across three consecutive ‘90s summers in a Texas backwater, it’s billed as a teenage drama but deals in themes that will grip adults too.