I’ll be honest with you: before a few weeks ago, I had never watched a single episode of Hidden Assets. The Irish crime drama had been quietly doing its thing on BBC Four for two series, picking up four-star reviews and devoted fans, and I had completely missed it. Then the trailer for Series 3 landed, and something about it stopped me cold.
Turns out I had some hidden assets of my own, two full series of one of the best new (ish) crime dramas on TV, sitting completely undiscovered.
Hidden Assets follows DS Claire Wallace (Nora-Jane Noone, Brooklyn, The Descent) and the Criminal Assets Bureau, the Irish agency tasked with seizing the proceeds of crime. It’s been compared to Line of Duty meets The Bridge, and for once, that kind of shorthand actually earns its place. It has the procedural tension of the former and the bleak, atmospheric pull of the latter, but it’s very much its own thing: grounded, unsentimental, and genuinely gripping, like peak Line of Duty gripping.
Series 3 picks up with Wallace and her team drawn into a case that begins with the brutal murder of an investigative journalist and her family in Bilbao, and a CAB raid back in Ireland that ends badly. The thread connecting them leads to 27 million euros in embezzled funds, a reformed ex-con turned restaurateur in the Basque Country, and a ruthless operator determined to stay in the shadows at any cost.
What makes Hidden Assets work is its refusal to glamorize. The corruption here is mundane and corrosive, the kind that hides behind portfolio managers and legitimate businesses rather than gangland theatrics. Claire Wallace is compelling precisely because she’s not a maverick. She’s methodical, dogged, and frequently exhausted by what she finds.
The move to Northern Spain for this series opens the show up visually without softening its edges. The addition of Inspector Jon Beitia (Iñigo Gastesi) as a local counterpart gives the investigation a natural double-act dynamic, and the show is smart enough not to let the international setting distract from what it does best: following the money and the damage it leaves behind.
Hidden Assets Series 3 is available on digital now and on DVD from 13 April, courtesy of Acorn Media International. If you’re where I was three weeks ago, vaguely aware of it, haven’t quite got round to it, consider this your trailer.
Hidden Assets series 3 available now on Digital and DVD.
