The folks out at Acorn Media sent over a copy of Dirty Tricks, a fairly substantial dark comedy series seen on BBC America, among other places (and here I’d thought Warner had the BBC America thing on terminal lockdown), and I’ll tell you this: I can’t remember the last time I had anything catch my attention so quickly and so thoroughly as Dirty Tricks did. But will it hold it? That’s what we’re here to find out.

Dirty Tricks follows a charming underachiever, a language teacher by profession, who meets an accountant and his wife, and gets to know them very well. And in the case of the accountant’s wife, very well indeed. Though that affair doesn’t last terribly long before our teacher finds himself hooked up with a wealthy widow. But when the accountant’s wife turns up prematurely dead, and the police start getting involved, that’s when things really go south.

Dirty Tricks is some thoroughly amazing stuff–a lot of terrific interplay goes on here, and all of it lead by its spectacularly capable lead, Martin Clunes. Not that the rest of the cast isn’t terrific, but Clunes is the clear hero of these proceedings, taking some incredible chances here and doing utterly amazing things on a regular basis. This goes from bizarre but hilarious sex farce to murder mystery and back and forth several times before it’s all said and done, and it’s that constant shuffling of events, almost of genres, that makes this a little something special.

It’s not every day that I see British television that’s so very engaging, and Dirty Tricks is engaging in every detail. You could call it a thriller, and you could call it a comedy, and in no case would you be wrong. There’s so much that’s great here that it should leave you patently amazed–it’s funny, it’s shocking, it’s funny again…it’s a beautiful setup.

Now, it’s not always perfect here–it can get dull in a few places. It can run a little long sometimes, wear its welcome thin. But it’ll more than make up for these lesser moments by providing plenty of high quality material. There are a few thin spots in this otherwise masterful presentation, but they can be brushed aside, small errors, scratches and dents.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this long and winding road an eight out of ten for doing a variety of tasks terribly well. It may not be a master of any trades, but it certainly is a jack of all of them.