The Murder Detectives: UK's answer to podcast Serial?

The Murder Detectives, Channel 4's new true-crime series about police attempts to solve the murder of a teenager, has been called "harrowing" and "intensely dramatic". Is it the UK's answer to the gripping American podcast Serial?

The three-part documentary series, filmed in the style of a drama, follows detectives as they piece together what happened to 19-year-old Nicholas Robinson, who was stabbed last year in Bristol.

The story spans the twists and turns of the case over an 18-month period, with unprecedented access to a major crime unit.

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In the wake of Serial - the hit US podcast that investigated the murder of a Baltimore student - there have been a lot of true-crime shows, but critics have singled out The Murder Detectives as an un-sensational yet highly compelling production.

Alison Graham of the Radio Times calls The Murder Detectives "a skilful, harrowing three-part documentary from the admirable Films of Record". For The Guardian, David Stubbs calls the show "melancholy, harrowing, compelling".

Tom Eames, writing on Digital Spy, says: "Ever since the Serial podcast became a surprise monster hit last year, there's been a real appetite for hard-hitting true crime investigations." This new three-part series, says Eames ,"could be the UK's TV equivalent of Sarah Koenig's award-winning programme".

Yes, true crime is all the rage, with a rash of series being commissioned, writes Catherine Gee for the Daily Telegraph. And Channel 4's tale of a horrific, and seemingly motiveless murder, is the televisual equivalent of Serial.

The twisting narrative weaves together the stories of an Avon and Somerset Police detective facing an apparently motiveless crime, one grieving family desperate for justice and another who will do anything to save their own son from a life behind bars, says Gee.

She adds: "It's genuinely eye-opening, and it makes for a grimly compelling trilogy of films."

David Chater in The Times says Channel 4 deserves praise for undermining "all the lurid clichés" of bad police procedurals.

The inescapable truth is that a great deal of police work is painstaking and dull, says Chater, and "the vast majority of detectives are not tortured mavericks who rely on flashes of inspiration to solve their cases".

Oddly enough, adds Chater, it's the show's "very lack of hype and histrionics" that, far from being dull, "is intensely dramatic".

• The Murder Detectives starts tonight at 9pm on Channel 4 and continues on Tuesday and Wednesday.