Moonflower Murders: Lesley Manville is back alongside Tim McMullen for the follow-up to Magpie Murders

It’s BBC One and it’s Saturday night – a time for lavish shiny floor shows, chat and… murder?

It might not sound quite right, but it’s not a completely alien concept. The recent US series Apples Never Fall looked as if it was going to feature a nasty death, but it turned out to be a red herring. However, the Irish thriller series Kin featured more than its fair share of blood and gore and popped up on Saturday evenings.

Last year a rather cosier entry in the crime genre featured in the slot too. Magpie Murders, which was originally a BritBox production, was based on the first in a series of novels by the prolific Anthony Horowitz, who also adapted it for the small screen.

For the uninitiated, Lesley Manville took the lead role, playing Susan Ryeland, a book editor who, in the present day, investigates the death of famous but obnoxious author Anthony Conway after he dies, leaving his latest novel unfinished. Conway appears to have committed suicide, but Susan isn’t convinced that’s what happened. Luckily for her, his fictional detective, 1950s-set Atticus Pund, is around to lend her a hand.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a crime show like it with a strong female lead treading the line between reality and fiction as she fights to uncover the truth,” claimed executive producer Jill Green ahead of it screening. But as she’s also Horowitz’s wife, you’d expect her to be enthusiastic.

The real proof of the show’s success is how well it went down with viewers, who have grown accustomed to being thrilled by the writer’s work, which includes creating Foyle’s War and writing episodes of both Agatha Christie’s Poirot and Midsomer Murders.

He made a cameo appearance in Magpie Murders, and was on set again for its sequel, Moonflower Murders, which sees Manville return to play Susan, with Tim McMullan and Daniel Mays back as fictional (or is he?) detective Pund and a hapless police officer respectively.

“I’ve been watching the filming of Moonflower Murders with joy,” says its author. “We’re back with the same cast, but this time we’ve got a whole new box of tricks to present as literary editor Susan Ryeland untangles another book within a book and another series of unfathomable murders. I can’t wait to show it to our audience.”

Susan has now taken the plunge and moved to Crete to be with her long-term boyfriend Andreas. However, she can’t settle after reading about a murder that took place at a British country hotel eight years earlier, and which served as inspiration for another of Anthony Conway’s novels.

A young woman, Cecily Treherne, who helps run the place, is convinced that the wrong man was accused of the crime – and now she’s disappeared. Can Susan, with help from Atticus, find out what has happened to Cecily and, in the process, whether her hunch about the murder is right?

Mark Gatiss, Rosalie Craig and Adrian Rawlings are among the guest stars joining in the time-hopping adventure.