New to Rialto in January

Next month Sky’s Rialto channel will premiere an acclaimed eight-part Danish thriller from Torleif Hoppe, the co-creator of The Killing.

DNA, which will air 8.30 Tuesdays from January 12, concerns a Copenhagen detective who, five years after his daughter’s disappearance, discovers a fatal flaw in the DNA database that might finally help him find her.

“Enthrallingly written and sensitively acted, it is not quite as good as The Killing or The Bridge, but Charlotte Rampling could take it to the next level,” was one UK critics verdict when it screened two months ago on BBC4.

“This was classy stuff, tautly plotted with all the best Scandi noir ingredients of fabulous interiors, troubled police folk and a gunmetal sky that only enhanced the sense of beautiful desolation while acting as a cosy advert for all things hygge,” echoed The Times.

Rialto also will screen a season of BAFTA-winning true-life dramatisations on Sunday nights:

• Murdered by My Boyfriend (January 3): When a teenage girl falls in love with the wrong man, the love story turns dark and sinister as he seeks to dominate every aspect of her life.Georgina Campbell and Royce Pierreson (Line of Duty) star.
• Don’t Take My Baby (January 10): A young, severely handicapped couple fight social services for custody of their newborn daughter. Queen Allen and Amanda Barnley star.
• Murdered for Being Different (January 17): On August 11, 2007, 20-year-old Sophie Lancaster was brutally attacked in a park by a gang of teenagers and died 13 days later. She and her boyfriend, Robert Maltby, were attacked because they were dressed as Goths. Sally Lindsay, Chanel Cresswell and Nico Mirallegro star.
• Killed by My Debt (January 24): Jerome had managed to get a motorbike and a job as a courier when he got two traffic fines and bailiffs started calling. On a zero hour contract and wages sometimes less than £20, under increasing pressure, Jerome couldn’t see a way out. Tamara Alexander, Owen Brazendale and Craig Parkinson star. 
• Murdered by My Father (January 31): A hard-hitting drama with a devastating finale, this is a story about the power and the limits of love in communities where ‘honour’ means everything. Adeel Akhtar and Kiran Sonia Sawar star.

A season of Asian movies will screen on Monday nights — Photograph (India), The Wild Goose Lake (China), Harmonium (Japan), Ash is Purest White (China) — while Wednesdays will showcase restored British classics Accident, The Lion in Winter, Darling and Don’t Look Now.

The Thursday documentary slot is dedicated to “compelling characters”, from members of a Satanic temple (Hail Satan?) and the theatre world’s super fans (Repeat Attenders) to a cruise ship baron (King of the Cruise) and a creepy clown (Wrinkles the Clown).

A Friday night Stieg Larsson Millennium season will wrap with a documentary about the author, The Man Who Played With Fire, while lined up for Saturday nights are the premieres of Song to Song, Voice From the Stone, To Dust, Mean Dreams and Suspira.