New to Acorn in January

A top British series that was a Rialto Channel exclusive will stream next month on Acorn TV.

Blood is a superbly constructed thriller about a dysfunctional Irish family unravelling the circumstances behind the mother’s tragic death. It stars Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar and Unforgotten’s Carolina Main. Reads the blurb:

Dubbed a “dark, addictive and unmissable crime drama” by The Guardian, Blood centres on Cat Hogan, an isolated woman on the run from the past who finds herself forced to confront it when her mother’s tragic and ‘accidental’ death brings her back to the rural Irish home and the family she’s barely seen for ten years. This uncomfortable, unplanned reunion will awaken sinister demons from the past and shine a new, suspicious light on her mother’s death, the fallout of which will ultimately change Cat’s life.

Although Rialto Chanel licensed the first season, expect the second to go directly to Acorn, as it holds the English-language rights for this market, Australia, Canada, the US and Eire.

In the UK, Blood marked one of Channel 5’s first bold steps away from its tawdry reality-style programming towards more adult, sophisticated fare. Observed The Guardian when it went to air in November 2018:

With Big Brotherfinally out to pasture, in recent months there have been a string of solid history documentaries covering everything from Egyptians to the Kennedy family, while Michael Palin’s two-part film about North Korea was genuinely unmissable TV. Now comes the next part of the evolution: a dark, addictive and unmissable crime drama. Blood is written by Sophie Petzal, who has worked on everything from Netflix’s Anglo-Saxon epic The Last Kingdom to Sky’s Riviera, and is part of a new wave of British and Irish writers who have broken through in 2018.

Blood will stream from January 27.

Also new to Acorn will be a slew of older crime dramas, including S1-3 of Agatha Christie’s Marple and the 2014 thriller series Chasing Shadows, both from January 6. The former stars Geraldine McEwan and was made between 2004 and 2007; the latter stars Alex Kingston and Reece Shearsmith (The League of Gentlemen) as odd-couple cops looking for missing person: one’s a maverick genius who’s an expert on human behaviour, the other’s a stickler for procedure.

The five-part Mrs Biggs (January 13) is a 2012 series starring Sheridan Smith (Cleaning Up) as the wife of the Great Train Robber, Ronald Biggs, while Collision (January 20) is a sprawling ensemble drama about the fall-out from a major road accident. Reads the blurb: “As the terrible task of investigating the cause of the carnage begins, a series of revelations emerge: from Government cover-ups and smuggling, to disturbing secrets and murder.”

Also new to Acorn will be Loch Ness (January 20), a small-town murder mystery that first streamed here on Lightbox, S1-8 of Cold Feet (January 13), and S1-4 of Mr Selfridge (January 27).