This promising crime series set in Amsterdam’s sex-work district has many twists and turns, but loses its way a bit en route to a slightly preposterous denouement. Things start out well, taking a nuanced look through various façades; not just behind the famous windows in Amsterdam’s Red Light District, where the seemingly progressive, safer and regulated workplace not only conceals a grim, illegal network of human trafficking, underage sex and gang violence, but a few sham marriages and professional betrayals too. 

Carice Van Houten (Game Of Thrones’ Red Woman) plays Sylvia, a savvy sex worker training the new lap dancers in a nightclub, while locked in an abusive and controlling relationship with her husband-pimp. Esther (Halina Reijn) is a successful opera singer, completely oblivious to her husband’s regular visits to brothels until his body is found and a murder investigation dredges up his dark secrets (Van Houten and Reijn co-founded Man Up, the female-driven production company which made the series). Evi (Maaike Neuville) is the Belgian detective assigned to the case, while struggling to juggle family life and the nagging feeling that she isn’t cut out for motherhood. 

The ten-parter begins as a gritty crime series and morphs into a far-fetched action thriller, albeit one with an enjoyable Thelma And Louise escape fantasy sewn in. Red Light clearly has good feminist intentions and an anti-patriarchal message, but it weaves together too many threads: a failed IVF journey, an abortion dilemma, a secret lesbian crush, a young female student infatuated with her older male lecturer, and an alcoholic mother burying herself in her job, among several others. The acting plus the murder whodunnit and female emancipation plots are compelling, but become tangled with too many implausible details in the last few episodes. 

Starts on Channel 4, Sunday 9 October, 11pm; all episodes available on All 4, Friday 7 October.