Last night's TV review: Slow murder is the best kind

The BBC's latest crime mini-series continues to draw the viewer into its web of lies

One of Us: disposing of a car and a body is trickier than it looks

One of Us BBC 1
Drugs Map of Britain BBC1
Garden Nightmares ITV

One of Us continues to intrigue. This second instalment of the four moves the plot along at a satisfyingly glacial pace, drizzling the murder mystery with clues at sparse intervals. The story so far is that a young couple have been murdered by a junkie who then, for reasons unknown, takes himself off to the remote village in rural Scotland where both their families come from. On his way there he crashes his car and, when the families realise his identity as the certain killer of their loved ones, finish him off. Now he and the wrecked car are buried beneath the Scottish sod, and the families collectively decide to mislead the police about what happened.

What’s so well described here is to watch how easily a web of lies builds up, one on top of t'other, each untruth carrying far too much weight and, all too often, constituting a self-contradictory account of events. There’s about half a dozen possible murderers of the murderer here, and you just know that they cannot all stick together for long. So you do start wondering what might happen to one of them who the rest suspect might tell the police the truth – given that the actual guilty party in their midst is yet to own up. I especially like the clever detective who wonders why a family of country folk should choose one of the wettest, muddiest days of the year, and immediately after such a huge family tragedy, to go for a walk in a field, one of them wearing only carpet slippers. “Slow” is on trend at the moment, and here is some very slow, sometimes very upsetting, but very good TV. Congratulations again to the BBC. My money’s on Rob, by the way, even if he is a bit obvious.

I make no apology for mentioning The Drugs Map of Britain, which is getting an outing on BBC1 now, having been on BBC3 and the iPlayer. Anyone who believes that legalising drugs would make them somehow safe, would somehow civilise them, would somehow minimise their impact on human life and dignity really needs to study this account of “legal highs” (which, in the past few months only have become banned). These “legal highs” were the model of what those who would legalise hard drugs wanted to see; sold in shops, “safe” in the sense they are unadulterated, with the distribution network and manufacture out of the hands of criminal gangs. And yet they still destroy lives, such as that of Liam, a user of a synthetic cannabinoid called Mamba who spends three months trying to kick the habit he realises is destroying his life. Why does he take it? Well, first of all because he wants to forget that, in his words, he has “no family, no friends, no money, no help, no nothing”. Second he takes it, I guess, because as a fellow user puts it, “Mamba kicks the bollocks off any smack”. So, then, half an hour of watching young people wandering the streets of Wolverhampton gradually killing themselves perfectly lawfully; required viewing for the legalise drugs lobby.

Like a magnificent Chinese honeysuckle in its fullest bloom, Garden Nightmares offers quite a dense and satisfying degree of viewer satisfaction as it chronicles human misery. I felt sorriest of all for the residents of a cul-de-sac in Bromley who have a rubbish tip measuring some 40ft tall by 100ft wide at the bottom of their gardens. It’s the product not only of countless bin bags, but also of the insolvency of a former recycling company, and not only does it stink (a London borough’s worth of soiled nappies see to that) but it spontaneously combusts every so often. So next time you notice the greenfly on your tea roses or the havoc wreaked by lily beetles, reflect on that.