BBC’s second season Magpie Murdersin the name The Sunflower Murders this timeIt starts at a wedding. There are the usual features: billowing pergola tent, hideous bridesmaids’ dresses, equally hideous headpieces, champagne flutes, rickety event chairs, lavish florals and a lush summer day (how far away these things feel).

Later, a confused maid from a nearby hotel runs in and ruins the blushing bride’s wedding dress with a wet red handprint. A murder has been committed!

Since it’s the name of the show The Sunflower Murders plural, with more to come from this highly decorated six-piece. So we jump forward eight years to a setting that looks less like B-roll and more like a tropical postcard. BakingWhere Lesley Manville wanders into the wilderness dressed as a woman of self-discovery.

This is Susan, she’s alive Mamma Mia She dreams of running a hotel in Crete with her boyfriend Andreas (Alexandros Logothetis). Those who watch the first season will know who Susan is (a former publisher) and what’s going on (she leaves publishing for Greece after discovering that her book mogul is actually a homicidal maniac who eliminates her star novelist). Those who are not will need some time to stand on their own feet.

The bride’s mother and father conjure up this paradise because their married daughter, Cecily, has gone missing after reading a detective story Susan edited, based roughly on the murder eight years earlier. Something in the book convinced him that the wrong person, a former inmate maintenance worker, had been put behind bars.

Having had too many kitchen nightmares in their rural B&B, Susan agrees to help search for Cecily. On the return flight – a suspiciously spacious and serene affair for a budget airline – Susan reads: Atticus Pünd Took the CaseThe novel Alan Conway wrote after convincing him with details of a real-life hotel murder.

As if there wasn’t enough going on, at this point we’re thrown into the world of the novel, which is set in the ’50s. These are magnificent scenes with beautiful period details: A vintage flying like a balloon Chitty Chitty Bang Bang The car with a retired Golden Hollywood star behind the wheel wearing elegant driving gloves. This is our next spectacular murder victim, who owns a boutique hotel in Devonshire and is scammed by everyone around him.

Atticus Pünd is put on the case after being brutally dismissed with a telephone cable. The actor, played by Tim McMullan, wears quintessentially British clothes and carries something of a Hercule Poirot. Susan sees visions of him as he speeds through the chapters of the book.

Here the safe has it all: a present-day disappearance, a murder eight years ago, and a fictional murder that could connect the two.

Perhaps to get a run for their money, the cast of today’s murder mystery has been reimagined based on all the figures from the ’50s, so Daniel Mays plays both the vaping DCI looking for Cecily and the bumbling DCI who doesn’t think twice about looking for Cecily. Just look at the excuses from the 50’s. He uses a very distracting Suffolk accent in both.

In the crowded murder-mystery market, The Sunflower Murders clearly trying to stand above its run-of-the-mill rivals. Adapted from Anthony Horowitz’s novel of the same name, this murder-within-a-murder is a multi-layered, multi-character plot triumph. But it’s also—as you may already be experiencing—quite dizzying.

The doubled cast definitely creates the feeling of pointing fingers at an actor you’ve seen in another movie, only to realize it’s from the other half of the series. Considering they’re not an exact match every time (the woman killed in the ’50s is Cecily’s sister, who is very much alive in the present day) it can all get pretty confusing.

Or is it revealing? Will Tudor plays Cecily missing her husband, but the ’50s setting is about a crooked hit-and-runner, so our money’s on him.

Perhaps because only so much can be confusing, most of the dialogue is very exposition-heavy stuff. It probably goes without saying that Manville is very good, so much so that you have to feel for some of his less experienced scene partners.

The Sunflower Murders It’s admirable for its high concept, but labyrinthine as a humble viewer trying to parse exactly who killed who and what bloody timeline.

The Sunflower Murders It will be available to watch on BBC iPlayer from Saturday 16 November, with episodes airing weekly on BBC One from that evening.

Deputy Television Editor

Previously TV Reporter MirrorRebecca can now be found producing expert analysis of the TV landscape. Digital SpyWhen he’s not on the BBC or Times Radio talking about all things latest season Bridgerton or White Lotus chaos in various places Love Island villas.

When she’s not binge-watching a box set, Rebecca’s sightings in the wild include appearances on the red carpets of the National TV Awards and BAFTAs, as well as post-match video explainers of the reality TV we all watch.