Des is primarily anchored by the terrific performances of David Tennant and Jason Watkins, the former a dead-eyed, matter-of-fact serial killer, the latter a hesitating, equivocating, slightly camp biographer. Both are very enjoyable to watch, and the programme was at its best whenever the two were on screen together.

And yet I was left feeling slightly cold by the whole thing. While Daniel Mays put in a solid performance as Peter Jay – I particularly liked his bitter delivery that Nilson was ‘unremarkable’ – I found his investigation scenes redolent of a typical ITV crime drama; the classic tropes were invoked and the well-worn story beats doled out appropriately. Little was made of the 1980s setting – if it weren’t for the indoor smoking and the occasional period car, I’d have been hard-pressed to identify this as belonging to any time period other than the present day. The music was full of generic haunting strings that could have been applied to any programme in any time period – how about some upbeat ‘80s pop to contrast or heighten the mood and take full advantage of the setting?

There was the occasional nod to the social problems of the 1980s, but this was ultimately just window dressing. I liked the opening clips of unease and malaise in the first episode, topped off by the dulcet tones of Margaret Thatcher, but none of these ideas were interrogated or developed at all beyond Nilson’s occasional reference to Number 10 or homelessness.  Neither was the prejudice towards homosexuality much addressed or explored.

The programme’s stated intention was to ensure that the killer wasn’t glamourised; on that count, it is reasonably successful. Despite most of the publicity (and, indeed, the title) revolving around the character and Tennant’s portrayal, a reasonable and sympathetic focus is kept on the victims, and the final title card listing their names was a nice touch. But I can’t help but feel that a more thorough interrogation of those earlier issues – homelessness, a society that places profit over people, the widening gap between the rich and the poor, drug addiction, homosexuality – would have done more to remember the victims and the circumstances that went beyond their control than the final product did.

The one scene that really excelled was the final one between Tennant and Watkins. Nilson’s icy revelation that he had lied about his number of victims, and had made three of them up, was a final move to unbalance his captors, a show of strength that cast doubt on everything we’d seen so far. For that moment, even behind bars, Nilson had one last card to play, one final bit of power to exercise. To me, that was the stand-out moment of the entire show: complex, surprising, and chilling, soaring far above the rest of the generally rote script.

But this ultimately felt like television going through the motions, poured into the shape of what a crime drama should be. The mid-programme advertisements for ITV’s upcoming ‘Honour’ – a similarly-shot, dramatic, big-name star ITV crime drama that looks identical – underline that. Anything potentially new or interesting that Des did – the character of Nilson, the dynamic between Nilson and his biographer, the invocation of social issues – went sadly squandered and underexplored.