End of Summer (BBC4, 9pm): New Swedish thriller set to wow viewers

And End of Summer, which is based on a bestselling book by crime writer Anders de la Motte, looks like it should fit in among that exalted company.

When the show was announced, Anders: “It’s incredibly exciting that End of Summer will become a TV series. I’ve worked on this with Harmonica Films for a long time, and with Viaplay we’ve now made it happen.

“End of Summer is my first book to be filmed, and for personal reasons the story is very close to my heart. I’ve read the script and seen the cast list, and I’m very confident that this will be something really special.”

It’s a story that begins on a summer evening in rural Sweden in 1984, when five-year-old Billy goes missing. The police investigation fails to solve the case, and in the absence of answers all manner of rumours and suspicions spring up, while his grieving family struggle to deal with their loss.

Twenty years later, Billy’s older sister Vera is leading a group therapy session in Stockholm when a young man named Isak turns up. He describes a childhood memory that he can’t make sense of, but it strikes a chord with Vera, who realises she needs to get to the bottom of what happened to Billy – and find out whether Isak could be her long-lost brother.

Julia Ragnarsson plays Vera and she was certainly excited to take on the role. She says: “This has really been a challenging and fantastic experience. Vera is a complex character and I’ve had the luxury of working with incredible actors.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Erik Enge, who stars as Isak. He says: “It has been extremely rewarding to play in this series… Partly because of the valuable interaction with such a talented ensemble and partly because of the unique experience and new experiences as an actor.”

In the second episode of the opening double bill, Isak has disappeared, so Vera’s search for answers takes her back to her childhood home in the small town of Reftinge in Skåne.

She tries to tell her father, Ebbe, and her brother, Mattias, about her suspicions that Billy might be alive, but it seems no one is taking her seriously.

However, her investigation is about to take an unexpected turn as she encounters her uncle Harald at her father’s birthday party. Their conversation makes Vera realise that she may have lied to the police when she gave her account of what happened the day that Billy vanished.