The Loch, ITV review - hokum shrouded in Scotch mist

There’s something nasty in Loch Ness – a corpse tied to a curling stone – but, this being tellyland, the real monsters lurk on its shores. The Loch aspires to be a Scottish Broadchurch – Braidkirk? – but, alas, is nothing of the sort.

An early scene in which three students arrange a load of bones and offal in the shape of a beached Nessie – while something or someone roams in the gloaming – raises hopes of a satirical approach to Sunday night crime drama, but these are soon dashed. There’s a human heart among the animal remains. 

“We should be wearing masks,” detective Annie Redford (Laura Fraser) says to her dumb sidekick as, unaware of the stopped ticker, they take the dead meat to the abattoir. “For disguise?” “For the smell.” How we don’t laugh! 

Redford’s daughter, Evie, is one of the publicity-seeking students. Her father (Gray O’Brien, pictured right), who earns a crust taking trippers for a ride on his cruiser, makes a killing the next day. So does someone else: a bonny piano teacher (Jordan McCurrach), up for a gay tryst at lunchtime, is found dead at the bottom of a cliff. The man he had a tiff with earlier turns out to be the doctor who certifies that his life is extinct. 

Still, the scenery is lovely. “The beauty of nature bores the living shit out of me,” declares DCI Lauren Quigley (Siobhan Finneran), brought in from Glasgow to run the investigation. She is assisted by hot-shot shrink Blake Albrighton (Don Gilet, below) who arrives impressed by the local fauna: “Saw a stag – balls bigger than mine.” When Quigley discovers Evie’s connection to the tell-tale heart she boots Redford off the case. 

Everyone is hiding something. Why did schoolteacher Craig Petrie (Alastair Mackenzie) steal the pianist’s phone? Who cares? Leighton Thomas (William Ash), a bad boy out on licence, pooh-poohs the idea that Lochnafoy is a community: it’s merely “a bunch of people drawn together by lies.” 

The low-point of this ho-hum hokum comes at the end of this first episode when a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, supposedly suffering Locked-in Syndrome, suddenly opens his eyes. Perhaps the poor actor realised what a Loch Mess he’s in… 

What entertainment there is comes from spotting the same old faces in different places. Laura Fraser was recently seen in The Missing and One of Us; Gray O’Brien’s CV includes both Taggart and Corrie; Siobhan Finneran’s, apart from Downton, Happy Valley and The Moorside; Don Gilet’s EastEnders and 55 Degrees North; Alastair Mackenzie’s Monarch of the Glen and Cold Feet; and the indefatigable William Ash’s both Paranoid and The Tunnel. Casting directors don’t like to go much out of their way either. 

The best that can be said about this Jock-schlock is there are no bagpipes.

• More TV reviews on theartsdesk