Spiral, BBC4, Sunday, 10pm BBC

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THE second series of this French police drama opens with a car being torched while muted pleas for help come from the closed boot.

It’s clear this isn’t the usual light-hearted fluff we’ve caught snippets of in hotels while holidaying in the ­Dordogne. No doubt those French folks with an IQ larger than a champignon will be clinging to this show like a Geldof girl to a man with a microphone.

Spiral, or Engrenages as it’s known on home turf, is a cross between procedural programmes like CSI and ­Silent Witness, and The Wire. There’s talking into dictaphones while grimly walking around evidence in trench coats and pointing at stuff, but it’s also dark and complex, exploring the hierarchy from criminal to political.

It’s hard to judge from any opening episode – The Wire took about eight to get going – but it’s perhaps less satisfying than the Baltimore-set show.

The dark palates of icy greys and blues and a gently ­bobbing camera-style are genre-predictable and it ­adheres to a fairly standard structure. But what start as superficial storylines, ­expand. And instead of neatly wrapping things up, everything is left tantalisingly open. This episode ends like a comic book – right in the middle of a police chase.

In fact, the action is more in line with something like 24. Minutes in, we witness the gruesome discovery and ­removal of a barbecued corpse from the car boot, a baby-faced copper throws up and the head falls off.

Cut to Adrien, a “super beau” teenage drug dealer, giving the first taste of class A to a girl in a loo cubicle. Merde! She’s passed out with nasal leakage. A blink later, Chief ­Inspector Laure ­Berthaud (an Amanda ­Burton-type) is ­being beaten by a suspect and she’s battering him back.

There’s also some dastardly behaviour from femme fatale Josephine Karlsson (Audrey Fleurot), a human rights ­lawyer who is oh-so-wrong and seems to have prime beef with Berthaud. But after a run-in with repo men, the ­assistant prosecutor (hunk Gregory Fitoussi) and a mooning tranny, what do you expect?

Forget the subtitles or the fact this is the second series, Spiral offers the instant gratification of a quick fiddle while retaining the promise of a tantric climax.