‘Lynley’ on BritBox Reboots Elizabeth George’s Detective for a New Generation

BritBox’s new series Lynley updates Elizabeth George’s long-running novels for streaming audiences while retaining the core dynamic that defined earlier adaptations: an aristocratic inspector paired with a working-class detective sergeant whose clashing backgrounds drive both friction and collaboration.

The drama opens with a boat approaching a small island and a bird watcher discovering a body on the rocks, setting the plot in motion. DS Barbara Havers, played by Sofia Barclay, is established as a Norfolk native whose bluntness and troubled history with partners have left her on the verge of losing her job. DCI Brian Nies, portrayed by Daniel Mays, assigns her a final chance: a new inspector, DI Thomas Lynley, will be her partner.

Leo Suter plays Lynley, a polished, Oxford-educated investigator who previously worked for the Metropolitan Police in London and now lives in coastal Norfolk. The character’s outward markers of class — tailored jackets, a vintage sports car and an upper-class bearing — are placed against Havers’s local roots and blunt demeanor. That contrast, central to Elizabeth George’s source material, remains a driving force of the series: professional competence and mutual respect emerge amid recurring tensions about manners, privilege and approach to policing.

The new Lynley follows a familiar procedural template in which a case serves as the engine for character work. The first episode’s crime, discovered by the bird watcher on the shoreline, functions as both an inciting incident and a means to reveal the leads’ differing investigative styles. Daniel Mays’s DCI Nies fills the supervisory role that redirects Havers’s career toward partnership with Lynley.

The series also arrives in the shadow of the earlier BBC adaptation, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, which aired from 2001 to 2008. Producers and casting for the BritBox version appear to be positioning this as a version of the story for a new generation of viewers, updating aesthetics and performance styles while preserving the novels’ attention to class dynamics and moral complexity.

Casting choices draw on performers familiar to British television audiences: Suter, seen most recently in period drama Sanditon, brings a contemporary screen presence to Lynley, while Barclay’s Havers is introduced as a more working-class, local force. The production emphasizes the Norfolk coastline and small-town settings, using environment and social texture to underscore the gulf and, at times, the complementarity between the two leads.

Early episodes suggest that Lynley will proceed as a character-driven procedural: case-of-the-week elements intersect with ongoing interpersonal tension. For viewers who recall the BBC run, the new series offers a retelling that foregrounds class as an organizing principle of the partnership; for newcomers, it presents a classic detective pairing — one shaped by social background as much as by investigative skill.

As the series continues on BritBox, its adaptation choices — from casting and setting to tone and pacing — will determine how closely it hews to its predecessors and how it distinguishes itself within the crowded field of contemporary British crime drama.