Everything to Remember for 'Dalgliesh' Season 3

When Dalgliesh first debuted with Bertie Carvel (The Crown) as P. D. James’s titular poet-detective, it was not the first serialization of James’s novels. Roy Marsden starred in the original 1980/90s adaptation, followed by Martin Shaw, who starred in a different version in the early aughts. (Both ran in the states on Masterpiece.). That makes this the third adaptation, which notably, like the Marsden ones, seems to be intent on adapting all of her works. (P. D. James wrote fourteen Dalgliesh novels, published between the 1970s and 2008).

Thus far, each Acorn adaptation series has covered three books, each with two one-hour episodes, which Acorn streams in two-hour blocks. Wisely, the series follows its own timeline and does not attempt a chronological approach. Season 1, for instance, presents Shroud for a Nightingale (1971), The Black Tower (1995), and A Taste for Death (1986), but all we need to know is that these first two seasons have been leading up to Thatcher’s Britain, with Season 3 beginning in 1979.  

The creators of Dalgliesh streamline each novel into tight, complex storylines. Carvel’s Dalgliesh, grieving for his lost wife and child, is a multi-faceted character whose vocations as a poet and police officer do not always work well together. His bagman from Season 1, Charles Masterson (Jeremy Irvine), was an arrogant bigot, threatened by the presence of a new female hire and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. Sgt. Kate Miskin (Carlyss Peer) is a working-class Black woman who’s worked her way up from uniform and crushing hard on her boss. Masterson is replaced in Season 2 by Alistair Brammer as Daniel Tarrant, a more middle-class type who keeps his ugly thoughts to himself, but Miskin, after landing a well-deserved promotion at the end of Season 2, moves departments.

As calm and self-contained as Dalgliesh is, his humanity and kindness cannot be denied. His poetry also makes Dalgliesh a babe-magnet of the highest order. (No wonder cops like Masterson are confused.) We see this again and again in Season 1 with "Shroud for a Nightingale," putting Dalgliesh among a bevy of female suspects as he solves the death of two student nurses at the hospital nursing school of Nightingale House. 

The middle two episodes, "The Black Tower," present Dalgliesh a case where an old friend dies in a care home, allowing the show to plumb the detective's feelings on death. The final two, which remove Masterson, is "A Taste for Death," one of James more convoluted plots where a vagrant and an aristocrat are found in a church with their throats slashed, managed to work in Masterson's corrupt behavior in a way that he becomes a villain in his own right by the season finale. 

Season 2 featured Death of an Expert Witness (1977), A Certain Justice (1997), and 2003's The Murder Room, with the latter two reset in the 1970s. Tarrant's arrival and the changed dynamic he brings are a solid B-Plot to the main tale of the death of the very unpleasant forensic biologist Dr. Edwin Lorrimer, chief of section at the neighboring police laboratory of Hoggatt's and the expert witness of the title. The middle case, "A Certain Justice," brings the team in contact with the other half of their profession in the criminal justice system, solving the murder of a criminal lawyer.

However, Season 2's finale, The Murder Room, sees Dalgliesh descend into despair as his losses and the ugliness of his police work start to affect his poetry. He’s at a crucial point in his literary career, with his publisher pressing for greater exposure and publicity: 

I have a vision of myself without this job, disappearing down emotional tunnels, writing myself into despair. I need something to hold me to the world.

The show's third season will cover three more of James' mysteries: Death in Holy Orders (2001), Cover Her Face (1962), and 1989's Devices & Desires.

Dalgliesh picks up on James’s emphasis on place, brilliantly portraying close, secretive communities and their troubled relationships. The institutions are frequently religious in origin and almost always geographically isolated: lawyers’ chambers, a nurses’ training college, a nursing home, and a museum. Frequent thunderstorms add to the drama in true Gothic fashion.

Dalgliesh Season 3 airs on Acorn TV beginning Monday, December 2, with two episodes a week through mid-December 2024.