Occupational hazard

Rival law-enforcement agencies arguing about which of them should investigate a murder has, of course, been a staple of crime dramas for decades. Rather less common, though, is for the agencies in question to be the Metropolitan Police, the Gestapo and the SS.

SS-GB (BBC1, Sunday), based on Len Deighton’s novel, poses the undeniably interesting question of what this country would have been like in 1941 if Germany had won the Battle of Britain. Its primary answer is that — in every way — it would have been very murky indeed. Again, plenty of crime dramas over the years have created a suitably noirish atmosphere, while cunningly saving on the lighting budget at the same time. But this one takes the commitment to the crepuscular a lot further than most: if it wasn’t for the CGI swastika flags hanging from London’s most famous buildings, there’d be almost no colour at all. The programme’s look is also matched by its sound, with the cast, led by Sam Riley as Archer of the Yard, seldom raising their voices above a laconic whisper — although they do sometimes fall below one.

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But murkiest of all are, not surprisingly, the ethical issues that come with living under occupation, as we’re invited to entertain the uncomfortable thought that collaboration may not always be avoidable, especially if you’re a policeman.

Admittedly, there’s not much moral ambiguity in the depiction of our new German overlords, who on the whole range from the smilingly sinister to the unsmilingly sinister. In particular, Dr Oskar Huth — the SS man called in when a seemingly routine London murder turned out to have links to the British Resistance — is only a monocle away from the sort of German officer we all grew up watching, with his full-length leather overcoat, his scrupulous observation of the difference between ‘shall’ and ‘will’, and his habit of brusquely ending conversations with the single word, ‘gentlemen’.