Van der Valk season 1, 1972

Van der Valk was a British cop show from Thames Television that for three seasons from 1972 to 1977 and was then briefly revived in the early 90s.

While the episodes are original stories the inspiration was Nicolas Freeling’s van der Valk detective novels. And the series captures the offbeat approach and the distinctive character of the detective hero remarkably well. This is a very quirky TV series.

Commissaris van der Valk is a Dutch cop in Amsterdam. He’s a bit of a rough diamond. He’s a bit vulgar. He has a slightly crude sense of humour. He likes a drink or six. He has a definite cynical side. On the other hand he also displays an amused tolerance and a good deal of compassion and while he can be tough he can also be a vey amiable kind of fellow. Barry Foster was born to play Commissaris van der Valk. He nails the part perfectly.

Neither the novels nor the series really explain the Dutch police ranks. Watching the series one assumes that van der Valk holds a rank roughly equivalent to a Chief Inspector in the UK but in fact a Commissaris is a much more senior officer, more closely equivalent to a Chief Superintendent. And while his offsider Inspecteur Johnny Kroon seems to fulfil the duties of a detective sergeant his rank really is equivalent to a British police inspector. All of which explains why van der Valk and Kroon often find themselves on cases involving very important people.

It’s clear that the intention behind this series was to avoid doing a by-the-numbers cop show. The emphasis is on very clever writing that misleads us into thinking we’re going to get straightforward detective stories and then throws in odd genuinely unexpected twists, and unexpected tonal shifts.

The first season is very much in the “shot on videotape in the studio” mould but like the best British TV series of that era (such as Callan and Public Eye) it turns that into a plus rather than a minus. These are stories that just don’t require action sequences or a lot of location shooting. In fact it’s a series that just wouldn’t work if done in the new all-action all-shot-on-location-on-film style that started to dominate British TV in the mid-70s. This is a cop series that is a million miles away in feel from The Sweeney, but it’s every bit as good.

In the first episode, One Herring's Not Enough, a mild-mannered art school teacher confesses to a murder. He found his wife in bed with another man. He killed them both. 

The problem for Commissaris van der Valk and Inspecteur Johnny Kroon is that they cannot find any evidence that a murder was committed.

It’s a clever story and it takes a while for van der Valk to understand the significance of certain odd features of the murderer’s confession.

Destroying Angel begins when a prostitute calls a doctor to the bedside of a dying man. The doctor suspects poisoning. The victim’s identity is a puzzle.

The vital clue is a book of botanical illustrations. A very very rare book indeed. Not what you’d expect to find in the possession of a man living in a seedy boarding house. The whole fingerprint thing is puzzling as well.

Blue Notes begins with death threats (written on blue notepaper) aimed at Jan Servaas, a famed concert violinist. Servaas seems very hostile to the idea of police protection. The threats are so vague that it is difficult to see what exactly the police can do. Van der Valk is not inclined to take them too seriously although Inspecteur Kroon is very uneasy about the matter.

The incident with the violin convinces van der Valk that the threats might be serious. The hotel staff are of course interviewed and they seem curiously evasive.

Elected Silence starts ominously. It appears that the series is going to dabble in politics, always a recipe for tedium. But this really is an unconventional series and this episode does not go where you think it’s going to go. It’s a strictly domestic tragedy. And the very slight hint of politics isn’t developed the way you expect either.

Thicker Than Water starts with a corpse in the canal. The corpse of a very rich well-connected young man, the son of a British Member of Parliament. And a young man who had somewhat exotic tastes when it came to bedroom adventures. The investigation takes Van der Valk and Kroon deep into Amsterdam’s hidden world of sexual exoticism but that’s not the real focus of the story. Another episode that doesn’t develop in quite the way you might expect.

The Adventurer is a fine example of the kind of narrative misdirection that is so characteristic of this series. It seems that someone is out to murder a quiet inoffensive German stonecutter named Gebhart. Gebhart has a secret, a secret from the past, but Michael Chapman’s script does not follow the obvious direction. Not only is Gebhart not what he seejs to be, his secret is not what we suspect it to be. Great guest performance by Paul Eddington.

Van der Valk is unconventional enough to be really interesting but manages to be a fine entertaining engrossing cop series. 

And Commissaris van der Valk is a wonderful character - very likeable in a slightly off-kilter occasionally prickly way but charismatic and fascinating.

The complete series was released on DVD by Network and the boxed set is still available. It’s worth grabbing while it’s still fairly easy to find. 

Van Der Valk is top-notch 70s British television. Highly recommended.