The Crow Girl is a gripping whodunit that brings a Scandi chill to the West Country

Guns N’ Roses and Nordic noir are not generally mentioned in the same breath, but they are two of the more intriguing ingredients that have gone into new Paramount+ thriller The Crow Girl. The series is set in Bristol, but it’s based on a bestseller by Håkan Axlander Sundqvist and Jerker Eriksson about a serial killer in Stockholm. The book is a cult hit, its fans including none other than GNR rock god and tiny-top-hat advocate Slash, who contributes to the soundtrack of the small-screen adaptation.

Fret not. This gripping tale of gruesome killings, a paedophile ring and the exploitation of asylum seekers does not kick off with the riffs to “Paradise City”. It instead imports a satisfying Scandi chill to the West Country, as it juggles a torrid sexual abuse storyline with a flinty performance by Eve Myles as a sardonic copper investigating the apparently ritualised deaths of a number of young men.

The murderer exhibits a Hannibal Lecter-esque attention to detail. By the end of the first of six episodes, two corpses have already turned up around Bristol. Both are older teenage boys, naked, their bodies pumped full of lidocaine, an anaesthetic that numbs the senses but leaves you fully conscious. The sight of their unclothed remains dumped in the cold grey light is obviously unsettling. It is also a pointed twist on the crime-fiction trope of dead young women trussed up as if in preparation for ceremonial sacrifice.

Enter the wisecracking DCI Jeanette Kilburn (Myles), who has to balance a tricky criminal investigation, a commanding officer (Victoria Hamilton) who can’t stand her, and a resentful husband stewing about his unsuccessful career as an artist (Raphael Sowole).

Here, The Crow Girl bumps against the cliché of the tough lady cop with a disastrous personal life. That it never entirely goes over the edge is in large part thanks to Myles’s wry energy. She portrays DCI Kilburn as a real person with real problems, rather than a stereotypical copper who can’t keep it together.

Her partner in crime-solving is played by Dougray Scott, who has travelled quite a distance since sparring with Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 2. Once spoken of as a potential Hollywood hunk, Scott is happy to be overshadowed by the charismatic Myles – though his character, DI Lou Stanley, is gradually revealed to be more than a mere hard-bitten sidekick. There is also a steely turn by Katherine Kelly as Dr Sophia Craven, a psychotherapist called on to assess a paedophile (Trevor White) who may have a connection to the killings.

The Crow Girl has many of the trappings of a standard-issue police procedural. The banter between Kilburn and Stanley, for instance, could come straight from a rerun of Silent Witness. At the same time, a seam of uncanniness runs through the series. It is hauntingly embodied by Danish actor Clara Rugaard (last seen in Black Mirror’s underrated “Mazey Day” episode – aka the one about the movie-star werewolf). She is Victoria, a former patient of Craven’s who has taken it upon herself to watch over an abused teenager (Chloé Sweetlove) – and who seems to be the only one who knows how the many plot threads tie together.

Slash does not make a cameo – not even in a musical sense. As the story bubbles and simmers, his trademark hair-metal fretwork is conspicuously absent. In its place, the soundtrack is understated and spooky – the perfect accompaniment to a thriller illuminated by the reliably likeable Myles but not afraid to get much darker than the average streaming whodunit.

‘The Crow Girl’ is on Paramount+ from today