Martin Clunes, the 63-year-old British acting powerhouse forever etched in viewers’ hearts as the gruff yet endearing Doc Martin, has delivered what fans are hailing as his “darkest, most gripping role yet” in Manhunt, a three-part ITV true-crime thriller that premiered on November 12, 2025, transforming the beloved comedian into a relentless London detective whose dogged pursuit of justice unearths the chilling real-life saga of serial killer Levi Bellfield, a story so taut and tragic it has skyrocketed to the top of UK streaming charts and sparked 2.8 million #ManhuntClunes posts praising it as “better than Doc Martin” and “as addictive as Line of Duty.”

Created by Ed Whitmore and based on Colin Sutton’s 2018 memoir Manhunt: My Fifty-Year Obsession with the Hunt for Britain’s Most Prolific Killer, the series casts Clunes as the no-nonsense DCI Sutton, a veteran investigator whose methodical brilliance and unyielding empathy drive him to crack the unsolved murders of Amélie Delagrange and Marsha McDonnell in 2004, linking them to the 2002 disappearance of 13-year-old Milly Dowler in a case that gripped the nation and exposed police failings. Clunes, shedding Doc Martin’s Cornish charm for Sutton’s steely resolve, inhabits the role with a quiet ferocity that has critics calling it his “career-defining transformation,” his eyes—usually twinkling with humor—now shadowed by the weight of unsolved grief, every interrogation a masterclass in controlled intensity that peels back layers of bureaucratic red tape and human despair.

The drama unfolds across London’s shadowy underbelly, where Sutton’s team battles a labyrinth of false leads and institutional inertia to unmask Bellfield (Craig Parkinson, chillingly banal as the cab driver who preyed on vulnerable women), a narrative so relentlessly paced it mirrors the killer’s predatory precision, with Whitmore’s script weaving Sutton’s personal toll—sleepless nights haunted by victims’ faces, strained family ties amid the job’s demands—into the procedural pulse, transforming a standard manhunt into a haunting meditation on justice’s human cost. Parkinson, channeling Line of Duty‘s moral ambiguity, imbues Bellfield with a terrifying normalcy that makes his evil all the more insidious, while supporting turns from Kelly Harrison as Sutton’s steadfast wife and Arliss Howard as a skeptical superior add emotional depth to the procedural grind.

Filmed in London’s fog-shrouded streets and rain-slicked suburbs, Manhunt captures the era’s gritty realism with cinematography by Ed Rutherford that bathes the city in a perpetual twilight, every alleyway and interrogation room a claustrophobic cage where truth fights for air. Clunes, who has long balanced comedy with drama in Men Behaving Badly and Reggie Perrin, elevates the genre here, his Sutton a man whose quiet conviction masks a storm of empathy for the lost, each breakthrough a bittersweet victory shadowed by the ghosts of cases unsolved, a performance so raw it has fans confessing, “This isn’t TV—it’s a gut punch.”

Premiering to 9.2 million viewers and a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score, Manhunt isn’t just a thriller—it’s a testament to Sutton’s real-life triumph, leading to Bellfield’s 2008 conviction and life sentence. As Clunes’ Sutton whispers in the finale, “Justice isn’t closure—it’s the light we leave on,” the series lingers like that unresolved case file, a clarion call to remember the victims who demand we never look away. In a year of slick procedurals, Manhunt stands raw, real, and riveting—a masterclass that proves Clunes is no doctor; he’s a detective of the human soul.