BritBox's 'Passenger' Trailer Promises a Spooky October Tale

Cozy crime series have been the bread and butter of niche streaming services like BritBox and Acorn TV since they launched in the 2010s. But BritBox, which began as a joint project between ITV and the BBC to keep Americans from pirating iPlayer, has changed course since the BBC bought out ITV's share of the international service. This summer, we will see the debut of far rougher stuff in the police procedural series, with the returns of Blue Lights and The Responder for Season 2. September will follow it up with the debut of the second season of Trigger Point. But it's ITV's Passenger, which is slated to arrive just in time for Halloween, that fully highlights the divergence.

Passenger was billed by ITV as a "dark comedy," an odd choice considering the initial commission emphasized the project's creepy, supernatural thriller elements. The first trailer also made the show seem like it had a real horror bent. However, the reviews, mainly positive from U.K. critics, explained the discrepancy. Passenger pokes fun at the cozy crime cliches even as the actual story hovers somewhere between X-Files meets Happy Valley. That sort of self-aware series puts BritBox on a higher plane than it otherwise might be; after all, it takes real confidence to laugh at your own programming, something the niche streamers at AMC Networks cannot really afford.

Written by debut screenwriter Andrew Buchan, who is best known for his acting role on Broadchurch, the series stars Wunmi Mosaku (Loki) as the classic "Recently Retired Met Police Detective" Riya Ajunwa, who in this case has moved to the small town of Chadder Vale, only to find that nothing about the small town is what it seems.