Everything to Remember Ahead of 'Van der Valk' Season 4

Except for 2021, Van der Valk has reliably returned to PBS every September since the beginning of the 2020s. The series, a remake of the 1970s/1990s Dutch mystery of the same name and based on the characters from the novels by Nicholas Freeling, has modernized what was a gentle show about a happily married man who had cozy family dinners when he wasn't out solving crimes. Piet Van der Valk (Marc Warren) is a widower. His wife from the novels, Arlette, drowned in a car after being run off the road by Theunis Visser, Van der Valk's old boss and mentor, who he discovered was corrupt and brought to justice. His assistant, Johnny Kroon, became Job Cloovers (Elliot Barnes-Worrell), still a naive innocent, but one with a heart of gold, who left after Season 2.

Van der Valk's first two seasons focused on solving Arlette's death and Cloovers' family situation. It also focused on the ensemble, with backstories for second-in-command BFF, Lucienne Hassell (Maimie McCoy), boss Hoofdcommissaris Julia Dahlman (Emma Fielding), and drunken pathologist Dr. Hendrik Davie (Darrell D'Silva). Pretty-but-dumb Sgt Brad de Vries (Luke Allen-Gale), often paired with Cloovers and also exited after Season 2. In their place, a new pair of underlings boarded the series: Django Chan-Reeves as Sgt Citra Li and Azan Ahmed as Sgt Eddie Suleman, contending with meetings held in the establishment of barkeep Cliff (Mike Libanon) and answered to mysteries provided by the barfly patron known as Homeless Frank (Peter van Heeringen). 

However, more changes are afoot for Season 4. Let's review everything we should remember ahead of it's arrival.

Van der Valk's first season grappled with the titular character's guilt over the death of his wife, and seeing justice done in her name. However, it didn't leave him totally single for long. While Lucienne had an ongoing boomerang relationship with her on-and-off girlfriend, Piet met Lena (Loes Haverkort), who he tentatively dated before dumping her "for her own protection" midway through the show's second season, only to discover when he tried to get back together with her, she was engaged to be married. Season 3 brought Lena back in a big way when the first mystery, involving free runners, landed one victim in the hospital under her care. She'd dumped the fiance and was ready to give Piet and his houseboat another chance.

But Van der Valk wasn't the only one dealing with a blast from the past. Sgt Li, it turned out, was the daughter of a couple who had been in the force and whom Henrick had been close with. Her mother died of cancer, and her father withdrew in his grief, leaving the pathologist as one of the few stable adults in her life. Now she's assigned to his team, and her tendency to throw herself in front of danger brought out the doctor's paternal instincts. 

Sgt Li also had the attention of Sgt Suleman, who found her attractive despite her evident lack of interest. Instead, he winds up as Lucianne's sidekick by the end of the season, the two finding a nice mentor-mentee relationship. And lest anyone think Julia would be left out, after her pup, Trojan, reached the end of his life, Piet took it upon himself to get her a new four-legged friend, Sniffer, who she fell in love with despite of herself. 

The new team members acquitted themselves well in Season 3's first case, which was good since the second mystery turned out to relate back to a cold case Piet had never felt solved to his satisfaction. Va der Valk finds himself hanging out with an old friend, Jan Kappel (Aden Gillett), a retired vet from his early years who worked the case and still remembered several things that never added up. However, the murderer tried to keep the past buried and wound up shooting Piet's old colleague, deeply grieving him, Henrick, and Julia, all of whom knew Kappel well. Meanwhile, Lucienne again falls into bed with a woman from the case, blowing up her relationship again. (It's okay; she buys herself a motorbike to compensate for it.) 

The final mystery of Season 3 involves magic, and it is one of those cases that only happens in books. The tried and true "body in a room where all the doors are locked from the inside" trope, with the team trying to figure out where the hidden trap door is and who knew about it. No one on the force believes in the voodoo magic stuff that runs through the episode, despite one self-proclaimed witch somehow being able to recite incredibly traumatizing moments from everyone's pasts upon meeting them. (We can assume it's because she's watched the previous seasons on telly.)

Despite Piet's best attempts at keeping Lena at arm's length, he manages to turn up at his boat at the wrong time, and the two wind up being tied up. The stress of the situation seems to work magic because by the end of the adventure, the two are back together once the team shows up at Piet's boat and saves them from being killed. It's a miracle.

However, though Lena is now a full-time fixture of the series, it seems that Season 4 will not have Sgt Li around to keep humanizing Henrick or Eddie to crush on. It's unclear if she transferred elsewhere (something she threatened to do but reneged on at the end of Season 3) or if her self-destructive impulses are to blame. Instead, Van der Valk looks like he'll wind up with multiple women whom he's slept with hanging around, as the series will introduce one of his exes to the team.

The new season also boasts it will be bigger and more dramatic than ever, most likely due to ITV still striving to make the show an actual hit instead of middling mysteries that are fine to fall asleep in front of on PBS. (Notably, this is the first season Van der Valk will air in the States before it does in the U.K., suggesting we here in the U.S. are more into it than our pals across the pond. It's also partly why Masterpiece's marketing has been a disaster since the U.K. hasn't released anything yet, and ITV would rather Americans know nothing than reveal spoilers for the U.K. crowd.) At least viewers over here will find out first if this reconfiguring of the already reconfigured Van der Valk cast can finally find itself a hit.

Van der Valk Season 4 will debut on Sunday, September 15, 2024, at 10 p.m. ET, directly following the premieres of Ridley Season 2 and Moonflower Murders (aka Magpie Murders Season 2), on most local PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel and air/stream weekly through mid-October. All episodes will be available as a binge for PBS Passport members on premiere day.