What to watch tonight: The Crow Girl is a stylish, unmissable crime thriller starring Eve Myles
The series aired on Paramount+ last year and gathered excellent reviews, and is now available to view on Channel 5
Fans of crime thrillers won't want to miss out on The Crow Girl, airing from July 20 on Channel 5.
The six-part series has so many exciting elements that will reel viewers straight in. It's based on the Scandinavian bestselling novel of the same name by Erik Axl Sund, and has the excellent Eve Myles at the helm as well as a stellar cast of supporting stars.
If Scandi noir is your thing, this particular adaptation of a book also happens to be pitch perfect - stylish, well-acted and perfectly paced.
Both filmed and set in Bristol, the story has been relocated from the its original setting in Stockholm, and it sees Eve Myles' chief inspector Jeanette Kilburn race to track down a serial child killer.
When bodies of young men begin mounting up in the city, DCI Kilburn teams up with psychotherapist Dr. Sophia Craven (Katherine Kelly), to try and get to the bottom of who is responsible as fast as they can.
All of the bodies have the same thing in common - they all have traces of the local anaesthetic lidocaine in their systems.
When Dr. Craven is tasked with assessing a man arrested for possession of child abuse images after one of the bodies is found dumped outside his work office, it leads her and DCI Kilburn on a unsettling path.
The man, Carl Lowry (Trevor White) is a dentist, who happens to have access to lidocaine. The pair discover other high profile men in Bristol could be linked to the mounting body count of young men, and there's suspicions of a potential paedophile ring underway.
Dr. Craven is also quite urgently searching for a patient she once treated. The woman, Victoria, tried to take her own life during a session with the psychotherapist, and hasn't been heard from since.
The appearance of Victoria's character clearly points to her involvement in the story of the missing young men in some way, but how?
Further subplots emerge, including vulnerable men getting involved in forced cage fighting, where lidocaine is administered to keep their pain at bay and keep them throwing punches for longer.
With lidocaine linking all potential suspects, our leading ladies must work out why, and how they could all possibly be involved with the killings.
While they get to the bottom of this, Dr. Craven and DCI Kilburn uncover historical sexual abuse and decades-long patterns of violence, covered up by powerful men and protected by police corruption.
The series really does offer a thrilling watch, and gathered huge amounts of positive reviews when it first aired on Paramount+ in 2025.
The show was so popular, it was renewed for a second season, which airs on Paramount+ the same week season 1 airs on Channel 5.
The second season will also make its way to Channel 5 next year. Speaking about the show to Radio Times magazine, Eve Myles delves into all the different things it's about.
"Yes, it is a chilling and unpredictable thriller but it also shows hope and the fact that there are good people trying to bring down the bad guy," she says.
She continues, "They are swimming against the tide and while some drown, others survive. They survive and they find justice. It’s a show about survivors. It’s about hope."
The Crow Girl season 1 airs on Channel 5 from July 20 at 9pm, with subsequent episodes airing weekly at the same time.
